The Chinese - Hong Kong Border

Disclaimer: Being new to the international blogging community, I discovered something very interesting as I tried to post the below diatribe from my hotel room in Shenzhen, China – you cannot access blogs, neither post them nor read them, from Mainland China.  It must be a freedom of speech thing.   I was, though, able to post it as soon as I arrived in India, so it is a little late and the time references are a little off.

________________________________________________________________________

This morning (which is now a week ago), I made the trek from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China.  I have done this many times, 93 to be exact, and have done it in every mode of transportation available (train, bus, car, van and ferry).  Each time, though is an experience, as no two border crossing are ever the same.  The speed and ease of crossing this border depends on many factors both macro and micro from the general disposition of the Chinese Government towards the world to the personal mood of the unusually surly customs official. 

The process is very simple, but is dependant on your mode of transportation and number of people with whom you travel.  The most common form of crossing for me is the van.  Usually a special van, a Toyota Alphard, is hired in Hong Kong. This vehicle must be registered in both China and Hong Kong, because possessing both license plates is essential as neither “country” will allow the other’s registration to cross the border (even though they are now technically the same country).  It is also ludicrously expensive to get both (I believe it is around ($60,000) per year), so this mode of transportation does not come cheap.     

The physical layout of the border is also interesting.  As with any border, there are two sets of tollbooth-like guard areas, but there space between them is unusually far – on some cases up to a ½ mile.  You pass though one, technically exiting one country and then wait in line to enter the other.  I always wonder who would prosecute you if you committed a crime in this no-man’s land, since technically, I am not in any country.  I may have just stumbled on the perfect crime!

Anyway, if there are 4 or less people in your van, you usually stay in the vehicle and drive through customs.  You hand your passport to the driver who, in turn, hands it to the customs official, who then tries to identify you from an 8 year old passport photo.  What makes the game more interesting is when there are more than one Caucasians in the car – apparently we all do look alike.

If you have more people, things turn slightly more complicated.  You must exit the van or bus and walk through passport control.  It is usually a mad house only made more fun by the 98 degree heat and 99% humidity.  As well, you must haul any luggage you have through the customs process and then place it through a screener (to which no one is actually paying attention).  You then meet your vehicle on the other side.  This can get interesting, because there are usually 300 grey Toyota Alphards waiting for their passengers in the massive parking lot.  The only way to indentify your van is to write down the license plate number before you get out.  I learned this little gem the hard way my first crossing 3 years ago and added an hour to the already long and tedious process as I searched through hundreds of vans in the 95 degree heat. 

This morning's crossing, though, was a little more strenuous than usual due to the amount of luggage I was carrying and that fact that I was on a bus, albeit a private coach, and had to go through customs manually. I hauled my bags out of the belly of the bus and fought the unusually heavy Monday morning customs traffic in what could only be described as a sweaty, epileptic-like circus act.  I made it, though, and am now comfortably ensconced in my hotel room waiting for the cruel mistress of jet-lag to release her steely, yet oddly predicable grip from my nocturnal rhythm.  Yes, it is 3:30am!