The train was the T812 Through Train from Kowloon to Guangzhou. Or from The Airlock, as Hong Kong is known, to China proper. The train was clean and was empty and only half an hour late. The train attendants – stewardesses? – wore bright blue suits and white gloves and, when the train had started, frilly white aprons. They came through offering newspapers, then unidentified food, then more unidentified food, then entry cards. Then they waved passengers off the train in their white gloves at the end. It was service such as GNER would never bother to dream of.
Border formalities would be completed at Kowloon's Hung Hom station, according to the Lonely Planet. Border formalities are necessary, as Hong Kong, though a Special Economic Zone within China, is not China. It has its own money and own laws. Its families are allowed more than one child. It is way more expensive. Anyway, the Lonely Planet was wrong, because border formalities get more formal on arrival at Guangzhou station. First the passport control. Pass (double entry visa). Then the customs check. Pass again. The German woman in front was pounced upon by the sniffer dog, said in a strong German accent. “I am scared of dogs! This is the second time!” whereupon the customs dog handler laughed and called his beagle off. I suspect the German woman is just a very very good drug smuggler. I should have said so, because a big sign behind the passport officials said that reporting customs contraventions was encouraged, and that China customs gave “spiritual and material encouragement to reporters.” Unlike most national newspapers I work for.
The German escaped, but I did not. I put my bags through the X-ray and the man looking at the screen said “Froosh!”. Five minutes later, I understood he meant “fruit,” and handed over the pear I had taken from my Four Seasons hotel room (did I mention that the Four Seasons is the best hotel in the world and certainly in Hong Kong and probably much much better than the about-to-reopen Mandarin?). Hong Kong, as well as having its own currency and own laws, also apparently must keep its own fruit. The fruit must not cross. The contraband pear was placed on top of my passport; a severe man wrote out an indictment, removed the fruit and returned my passport, making me an official fruit criminal in China.
It was easy to tell I was back on the mainland, from the taxi queue. From the fact that there was no queue. Mainland Chinese who would have stood in line in Hong Kong, probably, here shoved and bunched and generally paid no attention to courtesy or chronology. First I snarled, then I shoved.
The prices are another clue. I am here to visit my friend C., who publishes a magazine in Guangzhou, and lives in a nice high-rise apartment overlooking the river. She is a fan of all things tat, so much time and not much money was spent at the Wholesale Toy Mall of Guangzhou, where all that crap made in China is actually sold in China. Selected purchases: bright plastic chopsticks; a cigarette tin featuring the Italian football player Francesco Totti; jelly Snoopy wrist-rests, and solar-powered flashing keyrings. All for under a tenner. Brilliant.
Dinner was also mainland cheap. Six barbecue dishes and two large beers for under a tenner too. I mention this because in Hong Kong, they charge you to breathe. After dinner, foot massage. The last foot massage was in a chic spa in Beijing. This one was in Guangzhou's most famous foot massage place, on a street near C's flat, in the old quarter of Guangzhou. It's odd, after Beijing's zealous skyscraperness, to look down from C's flat and see old alleys and low-rise houses. Odd, but good. I have already investigated the local alley toilet. The toilets are open-style and clean enough, but they are the gathering point for the local prostitutes, who are tolerated by the neighbourhood, and who take their clients into the men's toilets. Two were standing there as we walked past. Tomorrow an attempt will be made to interview them, though an attempt must first be made to find an interpreter, as C's and my Chinese is limited to mime and pointing at phrasebooks. Mostly this works, though a mime for “tissues” produced toothpicks then plastic gloves.
But linguistic ignorance is probably good. A friend of C arrived in China after three years studying Chinese at university, and was horrified. She could perfectly understand everyone discussing what a big nose she had, or what an ugly body. She said she wished she'd never learned Chinese. I said to C, as we walked to the Toy Mall, that I thought it weird that Chinese people didn't stare much. It's possibly because C. is tall and beautiful, but in Canton, I am wrong. They stare. Then they stare some more. Sometimes they'll say “hello.” In the riverside restaurant where we had lunch, the waiter was tickled pink to see some whiteys. C. says there are hardly any here, beyond her, her shoemaker cousin and some other creative types. The rest are Russians come to buy wholesale, though not very successfully, if the Russian in the Toy Mall shouting “I WANT TO BUY” is an indication.
I don't mind being an object of curiosity and hilarity, but I'm leaving soon. I imagine it gets wearing. The foot massage place is like a bus station, with six foot massage chairs to a section, four sections to an open-plan floor, and was packed at 10.30pm. All of this meant that there were plenty of people available to giggle at the two whiteys. And they did. In unison. It also meant that when my excellent boy masseur was pummelling, punching and pulverising the hell out of my neck, spine, back, arms, thighs, calves and feet, I could show no weakness. I feel pulverised, consequently, but in a very very good way.