Well, I finally got to my destination after five days on the road.
I flew out to Tokyo and Hong Kong on Thursday morning, spent a night in Hong Kong and went into China via Futian Port (by train) a short while after I got up.
Bad idea. National Day collided with the start of the Mid-Autumn Festival (moon cake festival) and it was sheer hell navigating from point to point.
People, like salmon swimming upstream, were pushing, shoving, and barging their way home to whatever province, city, village from which they hailed. Chivalry? Dead as a doorknob. Train tickets from Shenzhen to Guangzhou with assigned seat numbers meant nothing. The conductors were just telling folks to board the train. You have a 10:30 PM train? No problem. Hop the 9:30 one. Chaos. Madness. A relentless tide of bodies moving, each one determined to get their own.
On the Guangzhou metro, boarders wanting to grab a seat and unwilling to wait for folks to disembark, shoved and elbowed their way in to grunts, elbows, and pushes from those exiting the carriage. By Sunday night, spawning fever was gone. The subways, long distance buses, and trains were back to normal. Taxi drivers, anxious to hold on to the exhilaration of exorbitant fares for regular trips, demanded 300 RMB from downtown Guangzhou to Payun.
Madness is gladness, oui!
Grapson! 