The Story of Shenzhen
Trip Start
Jun 18, 2008
1
37
46
Trip End
Sep 04, 2008
Shenzhen,
Guangdong,
China
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
We left the hotel early for our flight to Shenzhen, which is a city that is literally the farthest reaches of mainland China before it turns into Hong Kong. According to Adam, my favorite China expert, Shenzhen didn't even exist 20 years ago but has become a convenient industrial spot for international factories to cheaply manufacture their goods in China.
Hangzhou's airport was fine and everything ran impressively efficiently. In fact, my only complaint was that there was not better price regulation for the shops once inside security. I don't care who or where you are. The equivalent of $10 for a cup of coffee is outrageous. Anyway, as you may recall, it had been raining and we suspected some delays and considered ourselves lucky that our departure time had been postponed by only half an hour.
Once on board, it was a relaxed 2 hours before we began our descent to Shenzhen. However, this would not be. As Jason and Adam remarked, we appeared to be doing tight 360 · circles in the air... peculiar. All of a sudden, as we should be landing, the captain gets on the PA System to announce we are no longer going to Shenzhen but must make an emergency stop in Guangzhou, 30 minutes away. At first, I though we were going all the way back to Hangzhou but this is an easy mistake when everything is translated.
Not fearing we were in any real danger, everyone on the plane was up in arms. How dare they re-route us!! We were excited by the commotion as people began to stand up at their seats and in the aisles and turn on their cell phones. People, this is a plane, not a train! I wanted to shout to them. Once we landed at Guangzhou, though, we were not allowed off the plane. I was already scheming of how I was going to finagle customer service into providing a free train ride to Hong Kong as reparation, but then we realized we were simply stuck and not going anywhere.
Finally, after more Chinese-Chinese-Chinese outbursts and Chinglish apologies, we spent an hour on the ground in Guangzhou before lifting off again and arriving in Shenzhen a total of 3 hours after we'd originally planned. Apparently, some plane had had mechanical troubles on the runway in Shenzhen, which was why were not permitted to land initially. We were just relieved that we were safe and had not been silently executed aboard the plane through gassing as to avoid any public denouncement of the airline's proficiency.
So once in Shenzhen, we were tired of traveling and decided to spend one last night in mainland China at an airport hotel instead of continuing on to cross the border into Hong Kong. Though it would have been a pain to go through customs as exhausted as we were, Shenzhen is not a pretty sight and I do not recommend spending any significant length of time there. It felt dodgy, gritty and hot. But we were just there to sleep before leaving for Hong Kong in the a.m. Thank goodness.
