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So, Shenzen part two.

We woke up ridiculously late in the spa hotel. The whole place is like a Casino, no windows or clocks, and as you are only in PJ’s you wont have a watch on so you completely loose sense of time. We showered, ( used the mountains of complimentary toiletries) paid our bill ( about $NZ65 each) and hit the road looking for breakfast.

There is still a slight sense that fast food American chains like KFC, McD’s and Pizza Hut have a slight sense of luxury about them, I think it is the pricing, if it’s expensive, ( which by local standards it is) then it must be good. When faced with the options of live eels and tanks of the crabs, and the promise of “chicken faces” the night before, we decided for the safe option of a muffin at McDonald’s.

The service we encountered was not great anywhere, you have to pay for everything up front ( even at restaurants) and I even had to ask for my change, nothing at all was proactive about the service, but I suppose that’s just how it is… And the obeying the rules at all costs seemed to be as evident in Shenzen as it was in Hong Kong. I had ordered a muffin, and then decided i wanted to add to my order, but in the intervening 30 seconds, the clock had hit 10:30, and that’s when breakfast service finished, so no I could not add to my order from the breakfast menu. Oh well.

We then head off to our next adventure being Window of the World.

But first we had to find an address in Mandarin that we could show a taxi driver. To do that we would need wifi. And when we found Wifi we had to find a way of finding the place we wanted to go without using google, wikipedia, Facebook, twitter or a whole host of other “banned” websites. So no google earth, no GPS systems on phones, in fact, because according to my phone company I was no “overseas” even my texts did not work.

I remember being in China in 2008 and not having limited Facebook access then, it was at the time a minor inconvenience. This time however it was a real hassle. Clearly in the intervening years the internet now plays a significant part of everyday life. It is a tool for getting around, for finding things out, for even knowing where you are. Thankfully my much wiser and more techno savvy mate had heard of Bing, the microsoft search engine. It seems they are happy to share all your search history with the Chinese Government so they are allowed. So Bing it was and we were on our way.

Window of the World. Where to start?

It is a theme park set over a very large estate and it seeks to provide miniatures of many of the worlds famous sites. Although, some are not that minature at all, the Eiffel tower for example was bloody huge, a one third scale, and could be seen from miles away.

We knew it was going to be kitsch, and we knew it was going to be odd, but it was for those reasons we were there.

It was a Tuesday, and it was not all busy, we did not see one other foreigner the entire time we were there, in fact we did not see any once we left the train station. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Some of the replica’s were quite amazing, some were odd, ( why for instance if you were doing a copy of New York would you include the twin towers, I cant confirm but i am sure the park was built post 2001).

The Oceania section was a nightmare. The “Maorish” dwelling was pretty awful. It was a characture of Maoridom. There was a marae, with a variety of Maori pictures on the wall and then a few pacific nation flags. Aloha was plastered on the walls but there was nothing else Hawaiin. The imagery outside was really like a kids drawing. Genitals were cut off carvings and even the descriptions seemed to lack any accuracy ( apparently Maori were known for their pre european livestock management?)

There was a show and we decided to come back and see it. There was a powhiri of sorts, but instead of Maori complete gibberish and mumbling was used. Some “warriors” with sticks i assume to represent Taiaha then came on stage ( one almost looked part Maori but we found out after he was Chinese, lucky, cause if he was a kiwi he was going to get an earfull!). There was a lot of stick waving, and then some grass skirts were put on and everyone was taught the greeting “aloha” while, wait for it, doing the “hang ten” surfing salute. There was a lot of audience participation where the warriors scared teh audience by poking out their tongues and then the ritual humiliation of an audience member who was made to wear a skirt, and also poke his own tongue out. It was awful.

I found myself getting more and more tense and upset as the 15 minute show went on, it was such a butchery of our beautiful culture and so sad to think that hundreds of people a day were seeing this incorrect representation of our people. But there you go, this is China and this was made in China. I will raise it with the consulate, and perhaps also mention it to some media, it would be so easy to design something that was at least a little more accurate and authentic, but there were so many elements that were wrong, ( the representation of Taonga, the language, the whare), I wonder if even that is possible. I am no expert on Tikanga (culture) Maori, but I know enough to know this was extremely denigrating.

In between we noticed an “Alps” area, so in we went, it was a full Olympic sized ice skating rink, if that was enough, we noticed signs to the skiiing area? Skiing? Really? There were two snow areas, one for kids and a full sized adult ski field, we paid our $4 each and went in, took a few photos and went down a large slide…It was fun. And again so unexpected and surreal.

Anyway, post Windows of the World we again looked for coffee, thankfully a walk across the road and we found another Starbuck, right next door to a brand new Apple store. ( of course), we had a look around, found a second ice skating rink and decided we would start heading back.

The underground station was right there so off we went, less than 90 minutes later we were in central Hong Kong.

Shenzen is a brand new city and is tipped to be on the World’s new mega cities. It did not exist before 1978. It now has a population of 9 million, and is projected to grow to 40 million by 2050. The pace of growth and development is palpable. We noticed a large building under construction, it’s due to be finished next year and will be the second tallest building in the world and the tallest in China at 108 stories. Kinda says it all doesn’t it? One thing is for sure, this change will impact on us all!

I enjoyed my time in Shenzen and I will be back, I have been surprised by the number of people who have lived here for years and never been before. I met David in the city and on the ferry back to Discovery Bay, she asked how my trip had been, I said it was great, had she ever been. Oh no, she said, I could not go alone, it would not be safe. But the reasons behind that type of comment are a whole different blog post.