Posted on September 2, 2015 by biglychee
To mark The Year China Goes Broke (if you predict something for enough decades, it’ll
On Sunday I strode into the charmingly modest border control point at sleepy Shataukok, tucked away in the undergrowth in the far northeast of the New Territories. After going through the dozy Chinese immigration, I stepped out into Yantian. This suburb of Shenzhen is separated from the main city by mountains and so has a small-town feel to it.
Small town – but the first thing I see is a very very very long line of people stretching along the sidewalk. After several hundred yards, the line ended and was being let into a police station in batches. People were emerging soon after. With excited looks on their faces, they then headed in the other direction. Most puzzling, until…
…I came across the Yakult-packing hordes just across the road. The crowds were applying for permits to enter Chung Ying Street. Wikipedia says its days as a magnet for Mainland shoppers are over, but this appears not to be the case. It has obviously become a parallel-traders’ enclave, conveniently out of everyone’s way in the Closed Boundary Area.
Further along, closer to the port, you see China’s other rusty ex-Soviet-scrapheap aircraft carrier…
It’s Minsk World, a ‘military theme’ tourist spot. It’s probably fascinating and in excellent taste, but I had other things to do.
On through a new development called One City. Or, as I hereby rename it, One Deserted City…
Spiky-haired real-estate agents – exact ripoffs of the Hong Kong variety (indeed, they were from Centaline) – were lurking in a dingy little office in the corner of one block. They eyed me up, but I put on an extremely convincing impression of someone not interested in buying an apartment or leasing commercial premises in this wasteland, and they slunk away into the darkness.
I naturally had to know what these places look like inside, even if it meant a bit of surreptitious underhand window-opening. Voila…
The nearby residential area is inhabited and quite pleasant in a because-it’s-newly-built way, with play spaces and greenery. There’s a Starbucks, which has Wi-Fi only for people with a registered Mainland phone number, so the People’s Anti-Rumour Enforcement Agency can arrest you if you cause a stock-market meltdown. And there’s a mall, including a sprawling Vanguard supermarket with an amazing sausage display and pretty much everything else you need…
I mean – Hello Kitty booze. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
And so, to my reason for coming here: dumping Renminbi. I have a giant wad of the stuff – leftover laisee from New Year. I chose a Shaanxi restaurant because it was one of the first I found, plus it looked fairly classy, and my previous experience with this cuisine has been very good (think Sichuan-meets-Xinjiang).
With cash to fritter away, I ordered generously (though not gluttonously – this meal was for two). Last time I ordered donkey, I got something like corned brisket of beef. This happened here too. Conclusion: maybe donkey actually tastes like beef, and I have been expecting something too viande de cheval. The bean shoots and greens were infused in chili, Sichuan pepper and nutty oil, and seriously crunchy. Then there was the biggest, flabbiest noodle in the world, with a meat and vegetable sauce including some sort of rare and secret vinegar; this is the classic Shaanxi dish. Bamboo shoots, which like the bean sprouts you could binge-munch all day. And not least, an outstanding hot and sour soup – quite subtle on the hot and sour, with tomato, coriander and something hard to pin down, possibly anise but maybe not…
Including a couple of blueberry juice drinks, with real live berries at the bottom of the glass, the bill came to RMB160. That’s 16% of the Yuan foreign exchange reserves I was trying to offload. But wait! There’s a 20% discount today, the waitress reveals. And so I get change from RMB130.
I am left with no choice but to buy Yakult-case quantities of 3.8% Hello Kitty peach brandy.
Tomorrow is the ‘Death to the Little Japanese Devils’ Occupy Beijing with Peace and Love Parade, which is a clumsilyMainland-sounding day off here in Hong Kong, which in turn suggests a need (for the lucky few not being dragged up there in theMega-Delegation from Shoe-Shine Hell) for some holiday viewing. I declare the sub-weekend open with China journo par excellence John Garnaut in conversationwith academic Hugh White.
http://biglychee.com/?p=14485
