Category: China

Over the last year, I’ve travelled to Shenzhen in China five times, and I’ve got it down to a fine art. On several occasions I’ve provided colleagues with a cheat-sheet on how to deal with such things as Shekou ferry tickets and immigration paperwork. But on my last trip I tried something new, and I thought I might as well document it here.
Flights from Hong Kong to the US and Europe tend to leave at two times: late morning, and late at night. On my previous trips I had been booked on late morning flights, which meant that I barely had time to get from the hotel in Shenzhen to the airport. This time, I was going to Europe, departing on a Saturday evening flight to London. My initial impulse was to spend the day exploring Hong Kong, but I wasn’t sure what to do with my bags. This is how I worked it out, organized as a “how to” for my colleagues:

1. Take a taxi to Luohu (Lo Wu) station in the center of Shenzhen.
2. Go through China emigration and customs, followed by Hong Kong immigration. Don’t forget to hand in your departure slip, and complete a Hong Kong visit form.
3. Buy a Metro ticket to Central Station. You’ll need HK$ to do this, and the vending machines won’t accept HK$50 bills.
4. Take the Metro: East Rail Line from Lo Wu to Kowloon Tong; Kwun Tong Line from Kowloon Tong to Mong Kok; Tsuen Wan Line from Mong Kok to Central. (Be sure to change at Mong Kok, because it’s trivially easy: just walk across the platform.)
5. At Central Station, follow the signs for In-Town Checkin. (Note: verify here that your airline participates in the program – if not, this whole plan is inapplicable!) Eventually you’ll go through a turnstile and take an elevator up to the In-Town Checkin floor.
6. Buy yourself a one-way Airport Express ticket to the airport from the vending machine. You have to do it now, not later, because you’ll use the ticket to gain access to the airline checkin area.
7. Check in for your flight. If you are checking any bags (as I was), do this now. Ask what time you should plan to leave for the airport.
8. If you have any carry-on bag(s) that you don’t want to lug around Hong Kong, there is a Left Luggage office at the other end of the building. Show them your boarding pass and passport; you’ll pay when you collect your bags.
9. Now you’re free to explore Hong Kong for the day!

In my case, I left the Huawei hotel in Shenzhen just before 9am, and I was checked in by 11:30. This gave me plenty of time to walk up the hill and find an English pub for lunch, with Boddingtons and WiFi. The longest delay was at Hong Kong immigration: lots of people wanted to visit Hong Kong for the day. I didn’t stay in the city as late as I could have, because I wanted to take the Airport Express during daylight. (As it turned out, there wasn’t really anything to see from the train.)
Enjoy!
UPDATE: My Hong Kong photos are here.

Only in China…. My local convenience store now carries Lays Blueberry Flavor Potato Chips.
They’re not very good.

We finished our meetings here in Xi’an, and tomorrow morning some of us are flying down to Shenzhen. (The others will stay here with the Xi’an team.) Our last evening here went out with a bang: a team New Year party in anticipation of the Chinese Spring Festival in a couple of weeks. Much 白酒 (bai jiu) was drunk, food was consumed (including excellent duck and lamb – I like the cuisine here in the north-west), competitions were staged, raffles were drawn, songs were sung, and speeches were made. I won a soybean juice extractor in the raffle, an intriguing but bulky item which I decided to give away rather than trying to get back to Palo Alto.
And now I must shake off the effects of the bai jiu and try to pack. We’ll be checking out of here around 6:45am…..

So I have seen the Eighth Wonder of the World. And the title was aptly bestowed – it was magnificent, a wonderful experience. You can check out the photographs I took here.

• While we were driving out of Xi’an to get to the Museum, there was a M5.0 earthquake not far away. I didn’t notice it, though.
• Having seen so many pictures of grey figures, I hadn’t realized that when the army was created the soldiers were all painted in bright colours. The museum had some photographs of fragments which had retained their (mineral) pigments, and gave a vivid impression of what the warriors might have looked like. I was, of course, reminded of early Christian church buildings: today we admire the pure beauty of the marble and stone, even though they would have originally been a riot of colour
• I resisted the temptation to buy a replica of one of the figures, and instead bought a coffee-table book about the warriors. After I had done so, a wizened old man behind an adjoining counter offered to sign it for me. He was one of the farmers who discovered the figures back in 1974; he now lives in an apartment near to the museum.
• When the army was created in 210 BCE, all of the figures had weapons. Most of them were stolen soon after the death of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang (presumably weapons were more valuable than statues), and wooden pieces like spear shafts rotted away long ago, but many weapons have been discovered. I was surprised to see that some the generals’ swords had been “chrome plated”, and that other pieces were stamped with the manufacturer’s name and batch number.
• I hadn’t realized that every figures was designed individually. These were not stamped out in cookie-cutter style. The detailed work – the patterns on the soles of the shoes, or the way that the fabric of a tunic folded and hung, or the facial expression – was simply amazing.
• And finally, the museum structures themselves are wonderfully laid out. Yes, the big (“Pit 1”) building was bitterly cold, but the environmental controls seem perfectly suited to the preservation of these extraordinary pieces. Of course we saw it all at the best time: mid-winter, with no crowds. In the summer the place must be a zoo.

Another month, another business trip. On Monday I’ll be heading back to China for nearly three weeks. First I’m going to Xi’an, flying United to Beijing and Hainan to Xi’an. A week later, I’ll fly down to Shenzhen, before flying home from Hong Kong. It’ll be my first visit to Xi’an, and fortunately I’ll have at least one day to play tourist.
The only annoying thing about preparing for this trip has been my China visa. Last year, I had a twelve month, multiple entry visa, and I got good use out of it. I just ordered the replacement, and what came back was a six month, two entry visa. This is frustrating; it means I’ll need to get another visa as soon as I finish my next trip. (Even sooner, if I need to visit Hong Kong during this trip.) Time to switch visa agents, I guess.

Despite the fact that Hong Kong is now part of China, it is still a separate country for many purposes. You need to pass through customs and immigration to go from one to the other, and you need a visa which will permit this. Even Chinese mainland residents need a visa to go to Hong Kong. Overseas visitors to China can only visit Hong Kong if their China visa is of the “multiple entry” type, because a day trip to Hong Kong counts as leaving and re-entering China.
Both Kate and I had multiple-entry visas, and so the main question about going to Hong Kong was “how?”. In the event, when we returned to our hotel after 11-1/2 hours, we’d covered many different modes of transport:

1. Taxi from the hotel in Shenzhen to Shekou ferry terminal.
2. Hydrofoil ferry from Shekou to Hong Kong.
3. Escalator up the hill through SoHo.
4. Walking along Caine Street to the Peak Tram terminal.
5. Funicular (the Peak Tram”) up to the Peak overlooking Hong Kong Harbour.
6. Funicular down from the Peak.
7. Open-top double-decker bus to Central Station.
8. Ferry from Central Pier to Hung Hon.
9. Taxi to Hung Hon station (which is much farther away from the pier than it looked on the map!)
10. Train from Hung Hon to Lo Wu (Luoho).
11. Taxi from the gargantuan station and border crossing at Lo Wu to the hotel.

When we arrived at The Peak it was drizzling, so we grabbed two seats outside the bar and sipped our drinks. I had a Singapore Sling, which seemed appropriately tropical. By the time we left, it had cleared up nicely. On the ride down from the Peak, I grabbed my iPhone and fired up the “iHandy Level” app, so that we could measure the maximum inclination of the tram during our descent. Most of the way it registered between 5 and 15 degrees, but there was one patch where it was over 25 degrees, peaking at 27. That’s intense.
Eventually we made our way to the Central Pier, and had a light meal in the rooftop cafe while the sun set and the Hong Kong skyline lit up in neon splendour. Then we took the ferry across to Kowloon, which gave us a great opportunity to see both Hong Kong and Kowloon from the water. At this point our lack of preparation showed through. The tourist map we were using (free, and worth every etcetera) showed Hung Hon train station to be fairly close to the pier, so we started walking. After a few minutes, we came upon a helpful signpost pointing out various local attractions and the walking time to each. It included the station – 20+ minutes. We found a taxi. From then it was fairly straightforward: a 40 minute train ride, then emigration, immigration, and a taxi ride back.
So obviously the most efficient way to go to Hong Kong is by train. They run every five minutes, whereas there are only six ferry sailings a day. On the other hand, the ferry puts you right in the heart of Hong Kong, while by train it takes two changes to get to the same point. And we wouldn’t have missed the ferry for anything: we saw so much of the harbor and the islands around Hong Kong. So this all worked out very nicely.
A few final thoughts. Shenzhen is a huge, rich, and vibrant city, but Hong Kong is an historic, wealthy, world-class city. We both want to return, to really explore and get to know it. I can see why expats fall in love with the place. And my feelings are only slightly coloured by the fact that in Hong Kong they drive on the correct (i.e. left) side of the road, and have wonderful old tramcars whizzing along Des Voeux Road.
And once again we were staggered by the scale of China. A couple of examples: I’ve seen the ports of Long Beach, and Vancouver, and Rotterdam, but they are puny compared with Hong Kong. I have never witnessed so many ships of all sizes buzzing around so purposively, so many cranes, so many containers. And when we left the train station at Lo Wu, the entrance hall was larger than the concourse of many airports. We went to get a taxi, and lined up for one of 8+ slots. Every 30 seconds, taxis would fill those slots, passengers would board, and the taxis would depart, to be immediately replaced by 8 more. Then 8 more. And 8 more. Nobody missed a beat.
UPDATE: Kate’s comments are here. She reminds me of one of the strangest features of our visit: the women. Everywhere we went, the elevated walkways were full of women. Thousands of them. Groups of 3-12 women, sitting around together, eating, talking, playing cards, painting fingernails, bartering things, surfing the web, gossiping, doing each others hair, or just hanging out. One or two men, some children, but 99% women. We saw them when we arrived at noon, and six hours later they were still there. Some special Sunday Hong Kong tradition? Curious…..

I’ve let my social networking – blogging, FaceBook, Twittering, whatever – slide over recent weeks. Mostly it’s because of the sheer frenzy of life, but the Great Firewall blocking Twitter and FaceBook doesn’t help. So let me recap a bit.
Three weeks ago my team and I came out to Shenzhen for two weeks of meetings: architecture, planning, face-to-face time with opposite numbers, and so on. We made good progress – so good, in fact, that my boss asked if I could stay on for an extra two weeks to take advantage of the momentum we’d achieved. Naturally neither Kate nor I were too happy about this, and my first reaction was to say “no”. But then Kate came up with a creative solution. Last Saturday, the rest of my team headed back to the US, and I moved to a downtown hotel, more convenient for shopping and sightseeing. The next day, Kate arrived to spent the extra two weeks with me, having reorganized a bunch of commitments and getting a China visa in record time. And here we are.
During the week, I’ve been working flat out, so Kate’s been checking out the city. She’s photographed and blogged about her explorations, and she’s seen a lot more of Shenzhen than I have. And then this weekend I set work aside, and we planned to have some fun together. On Saturday, we went off with some friends and colleagues for a “team building” in a mountainous area just to the north-east of Shenzhen. The team-building was interesting, the Chinese-style barbecue (small self-organized collectives) was tasty, and the landscape was arcadian though a bit run down. It was a bit of a “magical mystery tour”, with the usual results.
And then on Sunday we went to Hong Kong. That deserves a post of its own.
We’re here until the 14th, when we fly back to the US. We won’t be there long, though: on December 7 we’re flying to England for a mix of family and business activities. That will take us up to December 21, and we’ll be home for Christmas.
UPDATED to correct several misrepresentations.

View here, at me.com.

This morning I took a taxi from my Shenzhen hotel (the Pavilion Century Tower) to Minsk World. The Minsk is a Soviet-era aircraft carrier (or battle-cruiser) which was sold off and converted into a theme park in Shenzhen. The taxi ride cost 60 RMB, and took me through a series of spectacular tunnels, the longest 1.3km. I spent about two hours at the ship, and shot a lot of video; I’ll upload a few clips to YouTube. (The first is in process right now.)
It was just after noon when I decided to leave. I walked to the main entrance, and looked around for a taxi. Nothing. Oh well: according to the map on my Android G1, the center of the town of Yantian was just a block north, so I started to walk. And then the driver got out of a tiny car that was parked nearby and waved at me. He spoke no English, I spoke no Mandarin, but the conversation was straightforward. “Can I drive you to your hotel – where is it?” Shows card from hotel. “How much?” Use display on cellphone to display: “80”. “No, that’s too much – I paid 60 to get here” (displayed on my iPhone via Oxford Translator). “Too little – how about 70?. And I took stock. Everyone had warned me to use only red taxis (strictly, red-and-silver), and not to risk the green taxis or the many unlicensed ones. But I decided to trust him. “OK, 70.
We set off along a route that initially confuses (and slightly disturbs) me, but turns out to be a cool short-cut to the highway towards Luohu, We zip through the tunnels, with the car windows open. Exhilarating. As we cross the Shawan River and approach the city, the driver closes the windows and turns on the air conditioning. This is a mistake: with the A/C on, the car barely has enough power to accelerate, and stalls several times.
Instead of taking the ring road around the north of Luohu, we cut through and pick up Sungang East Road. (I’m monitoring our route on my G1.) OK, this is fine; we’re making really good time. He’s definitely earned his extra 10 RMB. As we approach the intersection with Shangbu Road, we have a choice – turn left on Shangbu Road, then west on Hongli Road, or brave the most complicated intersection in the city, at Huaqiang Road. Seems like a no-brainer, and I show the driver the map on my Android and suggest that we turn left. No, no: he’s got a better idea.
He continues west on Sungang, then dodges around a bus and dives into a bicycles-only lane. Hmm. He zips along, scattering cyclists and pedestrians, drives through a cyclists’ underpass, and turns right. Things are looking promising. Then we turn a corner and come to a footbridge, which blocks most of the path. Easy for cyclists and pedestrians, but cars? Amazingly we squeeze through with about an inch of room on either side of the car. We can see our destination… but now there are steel tubes set into the pavement, blocking cars from entering. We need to get past; there’s no way to turn around or reverse back past the footbridge. I’m about to pay him and get out, when the driver decides to go for it! He squeezes the little car between the wall and the last bollard, and almost makes it… and then there’s a screeching sound of bodywork damage, right under my window. But we’re through. It’s only half a block to the hotel, so I tell him to stop, and pay him off. I give him a 100 RMB note, and he doesn’t hesitate to give me the full change of 30 RMB. I leave him gazing at his scratched paintwork.
I think I’ll stick to red taxis from now on, although the entertainment value was significant.

SEG is a marketplace – a bazaar, really – in downtown Shenzhen. It stretches the imagination in many ways. One floor after another of shops – no, make that stalls – selling every kind of electronic THING you can think of. Cables (power, ribbon, CAT-10, and everything in between), connectors, plugs, sockets, connector locking devices, capacitors, resistors, transistors, oscillators, inverters, solenoids, relays, trimpots, switches, buttons, lamps, LEDs, piezoelectric, speakers, amplifiers, chips (from 74xx DIPs and LSI logic to GPUs and quad-core CPUs), DIMMs, chip carriers, ZIF sockets, motherboards, daughterboards, PCI boards, every kind of expansion, I/O and peripheral boards, power supplies, graphics cards, batteries, power bricks, UPS’s, chassis, cases, displays of all technologies and sizes, from miniscule to wall-sized, keyboards, keypads, joysticks, gaming peripherals from steering wheels to swords, USB hubs, Firewire hubs, SATA hubs, speakers, synthesizers, mice, tablets, touchpads, headsets, microphones, lenses, chillers, fans, docking stations, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, laptop cases (and sleeves, and decorative decals), radios, antennas, GPS modules, sensors of all kinds, cameras, flash memory, disk drives, CD and DVD drives, enclosures for the drives, blank media. And yes, of course, there’s software, though not a lot of it. Windows 7 DVDs were being pushed at me at every turn, inside SEG and on the streets outside. And then we have all of the systems built out of all that stuff: thumb drives, cameras, phones, navigation systems, laptops, netbooks, desktops, portable media players, TVs, set-top boxes, game systems. Every big name was represented there, and each seemed to be selling everything from phones to laptops to TVs.
The focus is extreme. No t-shirts, no food, no music, books, magazines, or other “content”. (But then why would anyone buy a CD these days?) No distractions. Let’s make a deal. One unit, ten, a hundred, OED, OEM, whatever it takes.
This was all in one market, packed with people, all wheeling and dealing. At least 8 floors (I gave up counting). What makes it even more amazing is that this is just one of several places – similar size, similar business model – along one street in Shenzhen.
I didn’t buy anything while I was exploring, except for a drink at Starbucks. I did go looking for a pair of lightweight hiking trousers, but I couldn’t find anything in my size. Even a “2XL” was a 38″ waist.