Shenzhen （深圳）

Unlike the other exchange students here at CUHK who arrived from their home countries, I had arrived from the heart of China and hit the ground running. While they were still groping their way around the starting line, I was already sprinting ahead by a distance.

Many exchange students (like myself) didn't apply for HK student visas in time and thus entered HK as visitors. With my visa paperwork completed this past Thursday, Puipui at the OAL office attached a visa label to my passport. Most of the exchange students who haven't activated their Hong Kong student visas yet are signed up for a daytrip to Macau on Jan. 20th. Since I have a China resident permit and don't need to worry about wasting visa entries, all I needed to do was to leave Hong Kong and come back in to activate myself on a Hong Kong Student Visa. Shenzhen, China, for me was the obvious choice.

The KCR ride from University to Luo Wu was approx. 20 minutes and cost 23 HKD.

This is the view just after exiting the KCR at Luowu.


The immigration procedure out of Hong Kong and into China took about 25 minutes. So, in 45 minutes I had exited Hong Kong and arrived in Shenzhen, China.

And what an arrival it was.


The view of Shenzhen after exiting the immigration building.

I was happy to see the familiar China as I knew it. The air had transformed from incredibly clean to smoggy in such a short distance. The streets were no longer open and roomy as in Hong Kong (and the US), but cluttered with people, people everywhere. I had just gotten used to the clean air again in Hong Kong, but now fought the endless chain smoking of men everywhere, indoors and outdoors, in the restaurants and shops. And there it was, a man walking by me hawked a big, noisy loogie onto the pavement next to me. Ah, China, nice to see you again.

I managed to find an HSBC at the intersection of Renmin Nan Lu (人民南路） and Chunfeng Lu (春风路）. I was able to use my Hang Seng card in the ATM to withdraw RMB. The drawback is that I withdrew 500 RMB but the ATM deducted 525 HKD. That's a pretty huge fee for withdrawing RMB given that the HKD is valued slightly higher.

The Shangri-La Shenzhen is a towering landmark which will point you in the right direction towards the main street in the area.


The immigration process returning to Hong Kong was also quite easy. I was advised that to activate my Hong Kong student visa, I should have gone into the Hong Kong Resident line rather than the Foreign Visitors line, since they didn't have the right stamps for me in the Visitor line. (I had to wait an extra 5 or so minutes for someone to go get the right stamp). They said it was okay since it was my first time, but next time I came back in, I could go in via the Resident line.