Regard to your hotel question:
Very popular budget accommodation in Guangzhou is the budget hotel. The key character of these budget hotels is: they just focus on offer a decent bedroom and do not offer other luxurious facilities of normal hotel, so as to cut cost.
There is another type of budget accommodation in Guangzhou, which is called “white collar apartment”.
Many of these apartments are available to rent on daily; you can find some apartment contact from here:
http://www.ecomeego.com/Accommodation/article/White%20Collar%20Apartment.html