Yesterday I was in Shenzen, which was described to me as an old fishing village now full of seven million people. I had a meeting at a company that has, at this one location, 300,000 people working there. That's about twice the population of my fair town of Amarillo, whose people are scattered around the Texas plains and not all gathered together on one corner all trying to use the crosswalk at the same time.
Shenzen is in mainland China, so I needed a visa along with my passport (I had to get all that done ahead of time, using the efficient and timely services of a company in Houston called Fast China Visa Service - well, it was something like that). I took a wheezy bus from Hong Kong over the mountains and on toward the border, and I wasn't sure if that old and cranky bus was going to make it, the driver had to keep revving its engine, and we lunged forward every few feet or so as he coaxed the pedals to get us enough power to keep moving.
Once at the border, a scene of chaos as people streamed from newly arriving buses every minute or so, I had to go through an immigration checkpoint, and then I got on another bus to go to another checkpoint (this one to official enter mainland China) and then go through customs. No one really smiles at these places. It's all very efficient and a little intimidating, but you walk quickly, look the immigration police in the eye as they check you out, and then you, like the hundreds around you, keep moving.
Leaving was a little quicker, but the bus rides, smoother this time because it seemed we were mostly going downhill, were slightly more dramatic because, with every turn around a mountain corner, I could catch glimpses of the Hong Kong skyline growing larger and larger, lights brilliant, harbor crowded.
It seemed otherworldly compared to Shenzen, which was crowed and industrial, and with a population, I wondered, who had really only seen Hong Kong in pictures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
Posted by: Super Mac Wheel | January 28, 2009 at 06:48 AM