Shenzhen!

The week following our wonderful climb to Lantau Peak, Evan and I decided to use my last Chinese visa entry to do a little shopping (on Black Friday) in Shenzhen, China. We left for the border around 11 am. We took the minibus to Choi Hung and then transferred at Kowllon Tong to take the East Rail line up to Lok Fu, where we crossed the border into Shenzhen. The main reason why we wanted to go into China was to do a little shopping for friends and family members. I was primarily looking to get souvenir type things that people would like but when we walked into the commercial center right on the other side of the border, we were bombarded by fake name brand purses, watches, clothes, handbags etc. We could not find any good souvenir gifts. It was simply a building full of fake goods and massage parlours. It was a little ridiculous.

After searching and searching, Evan and I gave up in the building and attempted to seek out another place to buy gifts in the city. We took the train further into the city but to our dismay, we found nothing of what we were looking for. We turned around and came back to our starting point and eventually decided to get a massage and some fake movies.

We each picked up a drink from the 7-Eleven (Minute Maid Grape Juice…specially made for the Asian Market is DELICIOUS!) and were quickly approached by a man asking if we wanted any DVD movies so seeing as we had nothing else to do, we decided to entertain ourselves and go look at movies. They led us back into a backroom, near the jewelry section, had us sit down and brought over an photo album full of dvd covers. They mostly had newer releases and also had a lot of tv series. I was really tempted to buy the Friends DVDs but I decided against it and instead, got about 16 movies (most of which I had never seen before). Evan picked out a couple movies and a couple tv shows and after writing all of the names down, the man went to get a HUGE suitcase full of fake DVDs. It was a very elaborate system. I was expecting to simply be handed a DVD without a case but each of the DVDs were places in a flattened box of the “actual” DVD cover and most of them were then placed into a plastic case. Like I said, very elaborate.

We paid for our movies and then headed back through immigration and back to campus where we met Sumana for dinner. Overall, it was a fun day in a place that I probably don’t need to go to ever again. 