shenzhen

bad joss was the theme for the day we left hong kong for the new territories border with china. it started with me being awoken by the acrid smell of burning rubber @ 5am. as my mom has always boasted, i have a keen sense of smell. this smell, however, also had an element of danger to it. fearing a fire, lydia and i both got out of bed and investigated our guesthouse. the smell was even worse in the hallway, but we saw no smoke. we popped our windows open to let some air in. no staff was present. other guests arose from the disturbance as well, and a couple contacted security. building staff investigated the smell but could not place the source. they seemed to glaze over any possible issue, maybe to save face. we grabbed our gear, left, and told them to fix it by the time we got back at night. oh well, we tired to spin a positive out of it by saying that we at least did not sleep in. So tired though and a little headache ...

the mtr was pretty quiet as we took the 40 min ride northwest through the new territories to shenzhen, china. even the hong kong workers were not up yet. note on the city: shenzhen (pop. 752,200) is a special economic zone and is china's richest city. it is a restrictive city that requires a special pass even for chinese nationals to enter. why did we go? because it was there. because we wanted to say that we had set foot in china. because we had dreams of an ancient empire becoming a modern 6 billion person country. because we had a familiarity with jet li and chow young fat, chicken balls and egg rolls.

from our travel guide we knew that the border opened @ 6:30am. unfortunately, the visa office opened @ 9am. we had to wait an hour and a half. after we received our 5 day visas we crossed over a bridge encased in glass. below us was a river. behind, hong kong and a lot of barbed wire. ahead of us was china. there was a sign stating that you were entering the people's republic of china. as there were no signs to the contrary we took pictures with us below the sign. chinese security then came and made us deleted them. i am happy we had lydia's digital or they would have seized the film. what a warm welcome (smacked of laos).

once we had navigated through customs our first sight of china was a large gathering of people that were fenced in with barricades. they were being hearded through by chinese army officers using bullhorns. people hounded us if we wanted taxis.

china certainly is a culture shock! no once speaks english and signs aren't in anything but chinese (mandarin? cantonese?). everyone smokes and spits on the ground, even in public places. we wandered around looking for breakfast. ordering food was fun. there were generic pictures, but all the meals looked the same. 10 rounds of charades later with our waitress (thank god i've been practicing with conor) and coffee and egg sandwiches arrived. best cup of coffee i have ever had.

finally we arrived at our destination: luohu commercial city. it was an unpleasant market with aggressive vendors that would grab your arm and follow you if you showed the slightest interest. we went for lunch at a restaurant that was within the shopping complex and it was a disaster. they messed up our orders, again the language barrier, and then tried to charge us 3x the amount we owed. when we politely pointed out the mistake and asked for the reasoning (we could not read the bill as it was in characters), the "manager" caused a scene and got really upset. we kept calm. she didn't. she tired to convince us that it was our fault they had brought the wrong order, and that it was normal to be charged for the garnishes they had brought to the table. we refused, saying we would pay for what we ordered. she even threatened to call the police at one point, and lydia calmly again just stated that the misunderstanding was their fault, and that we would pay for what we ordered and nothing more. it was especially fishy as she could not explain the numbers on the bill. eventually an aussie came over and helped to facilitate the discussion as his bill was also wrong. in the end we paid more than we should have, but less than she orgininally tried to get from us. it was just too much drama.

after lunch we shopped some more but had the same bad joss. lydia's feet are too big for chinese shoes, and i am too big for any of the clothes unless i want the miami vice short sleeve look with my jackets. it is also hard to barter when anytime a cellphone will ring to tell the vendor that the police are on the floor all of the goods have to be swept into a metallic briefcase and sped away down the corner. you have to wait until the police pass by to start again.

on the way home we were exhausted, tired and dissappointed. even the elevator to our building was shut down. we had experienced so much, and so many things had gone badly.

my advice would be to see china, not shenzhen. i would love to see historic china, the sand pebbles and last emperor kind of china. but avoid shenzhen. it's cheap, lawless. it's sold out to starbucks and counterfeit everything.

but as i crossed into china over that bridge i said aloud that "i'm neil poutney and this is china." that i will remember. the other stuff will fade. it always does.