Deng Xiaoping's portrait is located in the Deng Xiaoping Portrait Square in Shenzhen, a quaint town just North of Hong Kong's border to China with over 10 Million inhabitants. And that doesn't even make it the biggest city in its province of Guangdong. That would be Guangzhou (previously written Canton) with about 15 Million people.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Today is Sunday and that means that it is the maids' day off. What does a maid (usually from the Philippines) do on her day off? Certainly not stay in her employer's house. It seems as if they all camp for the day at Central. It is before 9 am when i pass through here, but it's getting busy.
These people are singing for the Lord, are collecting donations, and handing out leaflets informing me that the Lord loves me. No, no sarcastic comments from me today: While I am in no need of that assurance, there most likely are quite a lot of lonely maids employed by nasty employers here, which feel just a little bit better just because they read that piece of paper.
Here is half of one of those never-ending MTR trains. It's dimensions are only visible because it's out in the open. 1 minute after I take this picture, a female official approaches me to tell me that I am not allowed to take videos or pictures here.
But when I point out that I only want to take a picture of the notice board, I am allowed to do so. (?)
So here is the picture that I risked official displeasure for. Please note: I am still in Hong Kong!
I am in no rush to get to China, so I get off the train at a few stops for a smoke break and to take some pictures: Even though the area approaching the border becomes more rural, the highrises are always present: But before you feel sorry for Hong Kong: Concentrating the people creates lots of green spaces and: Every single one of the flats has a view!
Eventually the series of train changes and smoke breaks comes to an end and behind this sign it is time to get a day visa for Shenzhen, to pass Hong Kong immigration to get out and then Chinese immigration to get in and the same in reverse to come back. And don't forget to fill out our arrival or departure card before approaching the counters ;-)Very first impressions of China:
Apparently this is a shopping paradise, even for people from Hong Kong. Fittingly, there were a lot of 'hungry' kids hanging around, using their perfect English (You want shopping?) to try to lure you into their store or into the store of someone who pays them or however that works. When I replied with my standard "NO shopping", their faces drooped a bit and they usually asked me "What are you looking for?". I think about half of them actually understood my reply "I am looking for China. But I won't find it in a mall!".On my way back I asked one of them where to buy postcards and stamps. His helpful reply was "Oh, you better use e-mail. My friend has a computer in his apartment!"
Taking the Shenzhen Metro to the Convention Centre (supposedly the downtown) was uneventful and rather disappointing. Lots of brand new highrises and lots of roads with 5 lanes in either directions with a moderate number of cars on them (it is Sunday). Again I am looking for a place to answer a nature call, and at least in this respect I am not disappointed in this part of town. Fancier the king never peed ;-)
I'll be humming for a while to the melody of a long-forgotten song : Pee-ing at the Ritz! (Click on my song name for Fred Astaire's version)
Right after that I leave the 'city center' again, because there is just nothing there! My brain has a hard time finding reasons for denying my feet their wish to return to Hong Kong right away, and even the 'Science Museum' is a bit of a disappointment since it is designed for 5 year old kids. A few things are kind of cute (especially the one of generating electricity by moving a magnet: see the red lights?) but it was the self-portrait of pressing the button for the moving electrical arc that changed the day: The process of taking the picture caused a mother-daughter team that somehow missed this exhibit to come back and play with it ;-) The mother seemed more exited about that than the daughter, but her smile reminded me that I didn't come to China for architecture or shopping but for the people, so instead of heading right back to HK after this, I decided to give whatever lurked behind the name of the next Metro Stop (Grand Theater) a chance.
The theatre wasn't too grand, but what lay behind it took my breath away:
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| Lychee Park: right behind Deng Whatshisname ;-) |
I found China ;-)
One final odd observation: Approaching the border again, I decided that it now was time to eat. I stayed away from the Hong Kong Style Restaurant and chose the Happy Flavour Restaurant instead. I speak no Chinese, none of the waitresses spoke any English, and consequently I pointed at one of the pictured dishes on the menu, looked at the waitress with a puzzled expression while at the same time shrugging my shoulders and making Moooh and other animal noises (including moving my hand in a meandering way to indicate a fish) to find out what was in it. This continued to amuse everyone for quite some time (15 minutes later I saw one waitress talking to another one, pointing at me while wiggling her hand and making a very familiar cow noise). Anyway, I think the Chinese suffer from the same problem as Americans: There is no need to learn another language, and consequently they refused to play this game with me and instead produced a bilingual menu after 10 minutes. Me pointing at the Chinese symbols of the Seafood Curry Rice dish and at the same time wiggling my hand again finally seemed to ignite the light bulb. But maybe wiggling hands in China have a completely different meaning and fish was the last thing on anyone's mind?
Worse was yet to come: I could not finish my 0.6 Liter bottle of Tsingtao beer (Sorry, Hans ;-)
And then this: My total for a fabulous Seafood Curry with the monster yummy beer in a super-busy tourist hub came to RMB 46 (divide by 10 then multiply by 1.6 to get to CAN$s; somewhere around $7.50, probably outrageously expensive by Chinese standards).
When I put down RMB 53 (~$8?) and said my Mh_Goi with a slight head bow a lot of chattering, head-shaking, etc etc ensued. It all culminated with the cashier grabbing the calculator with the HUGEST DISPLAY to type in 46. For quite a while I had thought that I was missing something (like a tourist tax?) but now I clued in: I pointed at the calculator, re-counted my 46 RMB on the table, then put the 7 RMB on another pile, pointed at them bowed profusely and repeated Mh_Goi. Never in my life has it been made this difficult to leave a tip. But they must have heard of such a thing, because finally they started smiling and stopped waving me back with concerned faces. I hope I will not be known as the person who introduced The Tip to China!
But after all that hand-waving and moooing, I thought they deserved one ;-)
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