This past weekend we celebrated getting our visas for Mainland China by taking a day trip to Shenzhen. I have heard that it is the fasted growing city in the world. It currently has a population of 14 million and when there I learned that its population in 1979 was less then 20,000. So that record would take some beating. The growth was due to Premier Deng Xioaping, Mao's successor, who declared Shenzhen to be a Special Economic Zone. I am not sure what that meant, but it certainly worked in terms of stimulating growth.
It is right across the border from Hong Kong. In fact we got there by taking the MTR (metro) to the end of the line and then walking across into China. We were accompanied by 1000's of other people - it is also apparently one of the most traveled crossing points in the world. Of course, it is not really a border, because both sides are in the same country, but we certainly went through two sets of immigration controls. It took time but it was straightforward.
Many people (both local and expatriates) warned us to beware of pickpockets in Shenzhen. Many people go up there to shop because prices are cheaper than Hong Kong. There is a giant mall just across the border and countless men soliciting the wealthy looking visitors to come and buy whatever. I am not a shopper at the best of times (except for food) and we just kept walking until we had passed through that area.
Our first stop was a store selling CDs and DVDs. The DVDs included those released last week and they all cost 20 yuan, which is about $3. Duncan decided he had to try one out. The quality was pretty mediocre for both sound and video, but the packaging was very impressive. We next went into a mall because it seemed to be advertizing tea. Unlike Hong Kong, few signs are in English. It contained the largest collection of stores selling tea and tea ware that I have ever seen. Outside, each store somebody would be sitting picking over the teas, separating the leaves from the twigs. They would invite us in to drink some tea, in the hope that we would buy. Other stores sold teapots and others still tea trays. This is different from a British tea tray, in that Chinese tea ceremonies involve lots of spillage and so your tray needs to be able to collect all that liquid. The ones that I had seen before were all made of wood or bamboo, but here there were beautiful ones made from stone, with extensive carving. They weighed a ton, but we are plotting how one might find its way back to Connecticut. For the time being we resisted all purchases and moved on.
Our target was the tallest building in Shenzhen because we heard that you could get to its top. We found it and discovered that the top was advertized as the first theme park in Asia at the top of a skyscraper. We paid our money and went up to discover spectacular views and a tacky theme park, which I suppose is what I expected. From the top, we could see a park nearby with a lake and boats for rent. We decided first lunch and then a boat ride.
Lunch was a little hard to find, which it never is in Hong Kong. But eventually we found a likely looking spot, went in and pointed to what we wanted on the menu (which fortunately had good pictures). There was one person there who spoke a little English and she warned us that the fish soup we ordered was hot. When it came, we discovered she had spoken the truth. An interesting in-your-face heat, very raw and irritating to the throat. But very flavorful too. The rest of the food was more moderate (and therefore typically Cantonese). The other interesting things about that restaurant were the large jars of picked snakes. I tried to find out more about them but the English speaker had by that time left.
So off to the park, where the first exciting thing was the grass. There is so little of it in our part of Hong Kong. We rented our boat, which had a small electric motor and seemed to go slower than all of the others. After a little while, our motor gave up entirely. Fortunately, our plight was apparent without language and another boat towed us back to the dock.
But while we were out on the lake, we heard music, so when back on dry land we went to investigate. Tucked away in the woods, we came across several groups of people who had just come together to play music. The first group we listened to had an accordion player and then two people playing the erhu, a simple two stringed instrument played with a bow. They were wonderful and pretty soon were joined by people who knew the words to the songs they were playing. They joined in as equal partners, not just singing along quietly in the background, but really giving it their all. Then another man came along who decided to be the conductor. The whole group of them was so passionate and completely involved in their music it was spellbinding. There was another group playing Chinese jazz (four saxes, guitar, flute and some kind of horn) and then just a solo sax player with vocalist. Then there were the feather hacky sacs, the badminton games, the dancers and martial artists etc. etc. I loved it all. If only that went on in our local parks in the USA ...