2016 - China - Shenzhen, Part 2 of 2
October 9, 2016February, 2016.
After our wicked trip from Chongqing, we landed back in Shenzhen in the middle of the morning. Fun fact, although China probably qualifies to be split into 4 different time zones, they choose to have one unified time zone (China Standard Time UTC+8). Fun fact, in Eastern China, the sun rises at a similar time to Eastern Standard Time (UTC-4) like in New York City and Toronto (630-7am in the warmer months), but in cities like Chengdu that are on the Western part of the country, the sun will rise at 730-8am because it uses the same time zone as those in the East.
The day was pretty low key, with me and Andrew going to OnePlus HQ to see some friends, namely Agilan and Cat. Funny story about Agilan, is that we actually went to the same university back in Canada and we were only a year apart. However we never saw each other there, and the first time we officially met was half way across the world in Shenzhen, China. Small world. In any case, Agilan was kind enough to hook me up with some OnePlus swag that wasn’t size extra-small for children (I’m looking at you, Cat).
I went just chilling around Shenzhen, trying to soak up the city. Although most people that work there hate the place, I found that it was one of the most exciting places to visit because it felt like: 1) China’s silicon valley; 2) it felt like a city in Florida because of it’s super wide highways and roads, decorated with a lot of palm trees (or what I think are palm trees); 3) and just how extremely migrant the city is, with very few people actually being native to the city.
Later that night, I linked up with both Agilan and Cat for dinner. I was told it was going to be a place called Obama BBQ and that the owner personally knew Obama. Turns out none of it was true, but the food was delicious, and the cheap vomit inducing liquor kept us on a good vibe for the night.
In North America, we always associate poorly thought out but really worthwhile debauchery with tequila. However in China, that special title is reserved for the local delicacy known as baijiu - a cross between paint thinner and anal sweat. Either way the party started to get real good — so good in fact, that Agilan and I started to swipe right on some lucky candidates on Cat’s Tan Tan account.
For those that don’t know, Tan Tan is the Chinese version of Tinder. Because Tinder belongs to Facebook, and Facebook is banned in China, the Chinese just released their own version. Let’s just cut to the chase, Cat is a single and unbelievably gorgeous white woman in China — she definitely can have her pick of the litter. Unfortunately, Tan Tan is like Tinder, which really enables bottom barrel feeding way too easily. I was also unpleasantly surprised by how easy it was to solicit unwanted dick pics from people. There were also people who even wanted some private photos of Cat for their collection. I replied with my own shot of me in my pink lululemon underwear — the bulge was readily apparent. It seemed that quite a few men were undeterred by this. I have the evidence, but it’ll fortunately never see the light of day.
All in all, it was a fine social experiment that left all of us dying of laughter at our dinner table. At the end, Cat was kind enough to let all the men down, as she said it was a bunch of her drunk male friends were chatting them up instead of her at the time, and that she was no longer interested.
We bid each other good night, and I quickly rushed back to the Futian/Lok Ma Chau crossing. Being spoiled in Canada, I assumed all border crossings were 24 hours, since that is the case for the Canada/USA border crossings. Not so in Shenzhen, and I was literally the absolute last person to cross back into Hong Kong that night. So last, that even the gate was closing on me as I crossed the magical line between mainland China and Hong Kong.
Smooth as butter, through the gates of China.
Back in glorious Hong Kong, I headed back to Andrew’s place to crash. Little did I know did I would be playing footsies with his cat, Dora for a large part of the night.
Next up, Hong Kong.