We arrive in Guangzhou at 7am. The air is thick with pollution and the roads and sidewalks crammed with people and vehicles. We ask a policeman outside the dusty, rubbish-strewn bus compound where we can catch a bus down to Shenzhen, and he directs us into a building nearby. The next bus is at 10.30, so we buy tickets and cross the street to an eatery where we breakfast on noodles, tea, and dumplings.
It takes nearly two hours for the bus to manoeuvre out of Guangzhou (Canton), which is covered by a dense pall of smoke. In fact, Guangzhou never really ends: the road to Shenzhen seems to one continuous building site. I’ve never seen a landscape so blighted, so polluted, so destroyed. It is as if a nuclear bomb has detonated. What land isn’t being built on is used as a dumping ground for spoil and waste from the construction sites.
The Border Control Complex, which was half-built when we were last here, two years ago, is now finished, and the five of us approach it via a raised walkway. Inside, we queue for about ten minutes for exit stamps, given in a desultory fashion by Chinese officials in baggy green uniforms. Through customs – nothing to declare – up an escalator, a final chance to buy crap Chinese goods, and out onto the bridge that crosses the small stagnant stream which marks the actual border between Communist China and Capitalist Hong Kong.
There is a phenomenal crowd of people on the bridge waiting to enter Hong Kong. We join them and wait for about twenty minutes, then push and shove our way forward, up another escalator, to the Hong Kong Customs Hall. Formalities here are equally fast, the officials clad in smart blue uniforms, giving them a far more efficient and respectable look. Outside customs, we all cheer and high-five with delight. We are out of the so-called “evil empire.” We all wash in some clean toilets, then buy tickets for the KCR into Kowloon. Walking down the platform, we watch the arrival of a train from Hong Kong. Crowds of people leap off and dash headlong towards China, as if they can’t wait to get back. “Fools”, we shout.
The air-conditioned train is crowded with commuters as it rocks gently along the track through the warm night. The lights of Hong Kong sprawl out into the new territories, and the sky grows orange with the reflection of millions of sodium vapour lamps. We have to change trains twice before we arrive at Tsim Sha Tsui station, and leave Roy and Jenny, who have to connect with yet another train to get out to the suburb where they will be staying. Linda, Simon, and I climb the stairs to the street, emerging amid the crowded and chaotic scene of Nathan Road.
The press of people is enormous, and we shoulder our way through the crowds beneath the jumble of neon signs, which serve to blot out the dark of night and replace it with an electric rainbow. Outside Chunking Mansions, we are hassled by touts with rooms for rent. “Very clean, cheap price, just right for you,” etc. Most of them are Pakistani, and I think how small the circle is. But we ignore them and try to find slightly more stylish digs. The Ambassador Hotel charges HK$1,200 for a double, which is a little beyond what we hope to spend, and when I say to the concierge that we might look around a little, he says, “Anyway, we’re full.” Yeah, right.
It takes about an hour to find a place to stay. Linda and I opt for a tatty but clean and quiet place called the Bangkok Hotel. We’re not sure whether the pun is intended or not. Simon disappears off into the night to find a place that he had stayed in on a previous visit. After showers, Linda and I walk back down Nathan Road to one of Kowloon’s numerous McDonalds and fill ourselves to the eyeballs with junk food. It is a curious thing with travellers exiting China that, almost without exception, they all head straight for the Golden Arches the minute they hit Hong Kong. It is as if the bright yellow curvatures represent some sort of sacred portal beyond which lies the civilised and comfortable world we all long for while we’re suffering the rigours of China, and the only way to return to our own private Arcadia is to pass beneath them and gobble up a trayful of sanctified food. We leave the McDonalds place feeling sick having eaten too much, too fast, and stroll back up to the hotel, browsing in a few shops along the way. Our night in the Bangkok Hotel is comfortable, quiet, and restful.
CurseOfTheTraveller 