China – Sam and Martha's travel blog

After missing our chance to go to China a few weeks ago, my cousin suggested that we could go today for a few hours, so we did!

My cousin goes fairly regularly (his wife’s family live there) so I was grateful that he would be our guide for the day.

The first task was to get to West Kowloon Station and from there catch the High Speed Rail to Shenzhen.

We got our tickets for the next train, which fortunately are quite regular. Unfortunately, the station was much busier than normal due to much of the the MTR (Hong Kong subway) being closed so people could only get to China from here. Also because we were technically entering another country and not Hong Kong citizens, we had to go through all the immigration and security controls.

Because of all this we missed our booked train and had to buy new tickets for the next one as they wouldn’t exchange them. That was a bit annoying but eventually we managed to get on a train which was very comfortable and very fast once we set off. We arrived at Futian Station, Shenzhen, in mainland China in less than 20 minutes.

We had lunch in the station (Sam got his first taste of chicken feet) and then went outside for a walk around the area. We only had a few hours before our return train so we didn’t wander far.

We walked to Lianhuashan Park and walked up a hill to Peak Square where there is a large statue of Deng Xiaoping who was leader of the People’s Republic of China from 1978 to 1992.

It was hot and really humid walking up but we were rewarded with great views of Shenzhen.

It’s a shame that we didn’t have more time to explore the area but we had a nice day and enjoyed the walk in the park.