There’s A Shenzhen East?

Our break from big cities didn’t last very long - after Luotiancun our next destination was a little bigger: Hong Kong. Once again though, getting to the place was not a simple matter. Travelling over land, the gateway to Hong Kong in China is Shenzhen (a city that is mostly noted for getting incredibly rich incredibly fast in recent times). Seeing as Hong Kong is not completely part of China yet (it remains a “Special Administrative Region” until 2047), a border control and customs must be passed through to reach the territory.

Seeing as we were getting an overnight train to Shenzhen, we were pleased to learn that the border crossing is adjacent to Shenzhen train station, saving us a bit of bother. What we didn’t know was that our train was to Shenzhen East, which was actually about 25km east of the main station. After our arrival we had some difficulty working out how to get to the Hong Kong border. It came down to a choice between paying too much to some hard-nosed taxi drivers (who frustratingly refused to lower their extortionate quoted prices) and taking our chances with public transport. Typical of the Chinese, there was one young woman who saw our predicament and decided to help. With her basic English, she guided us to the correct bus. In the end it was easy, the bus conductor letting us know exactly which stop to depart for our metro connection - the metro here being like the other metro systems in China, efficient and easy to follow.



After breezing through customs, the differences between Hong Kong and her (step) motherland were noticeable, though obviously not as pronounced as the differences between China and Nepal. Stopping for a quick coffee, I was able to browse through an English language newspaper, something of a specialty item pre-border crossing. The different currency was the most noticeable difference, though it was an easy adjustment, dividing by 100 (rather than by 10 in China) to convert from the Hong Kong Dollar to Euro.



With the border now linked to the city’s metro system, we were able to travel all the way to our Hong Kong Island-located hostel in amazingly quick time for somewhere as densely populated and urbanized as this. More differences were apparent after we resurfaced from our metro journey. Compared to Chinese cities, here seemed less chaotic, better organized, and certainly more developed. Some Chinese cities can seem like they’ve been rapidly thrown together quite recently, and are still adjusting to this new, faster pace - whereas for Hong Kong life in the fast lane is all it’s known for quite some time.