シェンズン

Sunday morning after my presentation at the conference, I checked out of the hotel and headed to the train station (and got in the argument w/ the taxi guy). I took the train to Shenzhen. Not too bad, nicer than the other 'hard seat' trains i've taken in China.


It took about 1.5 hours, next time I'll try to take the express train.


I took the Shenzhen subway, which just opened this year (see my entry about it from 5/1). I couldn't resist more shots of the station 'art work'... its a giant keyboard...


its a seat for weary travellers!


I stayed at my favorite hotel in Shenzhen, this time I got them to give me a discount rate, and they gave me the kingsize bed room too!


Not bad for $40 a night! :-P


Don't ask, don't tell.


That night I had dinner with my friend Gao Lei.


We enjoyed a wide variety of dishes, including some sort of mashed potatoes, beef noodles and the potentially lactose intolerably 'shuang pi nai'.


More strange bathroom slogans, this one was at a KFC. In English it says "If there's a smell, don't forget to tell, we will make it well." It says the same thing in Chinese, but it doesn't rhyme.


I spent a good portion of today shopping for random electronics. Here is a DVD burner for only $50. Everytime I come back i'm impressed w/ the rapid improvement in the electronics here. It seems like more real branded stores are opening and taking over floor space that used to be dominated by dozens of individual booths. Which might hurt price competition, but actually makes it much easier to browse, etc. I think its a good thing.


There's still plenty of crazy technology. Here at McDonalds a guy is assembling a cell phone from a bunch of components. In some of the markets they have rooms full of guys w/ sodering irons putting together and then testing stuff (mini-tech sweatshops). I was somewhat curious what exactly they're doing. Either refurbishing broken phones or making new ones...


Speaking of the wonders of China:

Here are two wonderful examples of Chinese DVD piracy. on the bottom you can see two DVDs on sale who's covers are made by putting a famous star's face on someone else's body. This star may or may not actually appear in the movie. On the left, there's Hsu Chi's face on Kiera Knightley's body from the 'King Arthur' poster. I think from the pictures on the back, Hsu Chi is actually in the movie. It was one of her early pornish films in Taiwan.

On the right you have Daniel Wu's picture from the New Police Story poster, pasted on Chow Yun Fat's body from the 'Replacement Killers' poster. The title in English says 'Cop on a Mission', one of Daniel's movies, but the Chinese title is for some other movie (not one of his, I don't know what it is).

All that computer power, and they waste it on this kind of stuff. :-P


Here's what I bought this day:

I wasn't really looking to buy anything, but I picked up a few things that caught my eye. Those are all DVDs except the Mai Kuraki CD. Oh, I also got a UK-US/Japan plug adapter for only $0.37 too. :-P



On my way to the border by taxi, I realized i hadn't taken many pictures with my digital camera (most of the above are w/ my phone camera). So I took a few of the city. As you can see, much nicer than Guangzhou. Since this city is new, it is much less crowded and dirty than the average chinese city.


This was the first sunny, clear day since I had gotten to Hong Kong last wednesday. This building, the Shen Hing Square, is quite tall, 325m = 1066ft. with the antenna, its 384m/1260ft.


I snapped a quick picture of the rail crossing into Hong Kong. You have to walk through customs, then go over a bridge into Hong Kong, then get on a train to the city. The funny thing about this place is that there's a huge city on the Chinese side, but there's nothing but a train station, some nice green hills and a few farmers on the Hong Kong side of the fence.