It’s only 2:30pm, and I already feel like I’ve had a long day. Arriving in Shenzhen this morning at 7:20 on the night train from Wuhan, I cheerfully crossed the border into Hong Kong, did my business, and came right back.

Crossing the border itself is something of an unsettling experience, something I noticed the first time I visited Hong Kong from the mainland (that time making the crossing by bus).

It felt very much like walking through a mirror; on China’s side of the border, I disembarked from my bus on the right side, then walked up to the Chinese border controls. Greeted entirely by pretty girls wearing dark blue uniforms, white caps, and almost universally grim expressions, I was guided to a lane marked “Foreigners,” and ushered through the gates quickly and efficiently.

Ahead of me, through the No-Man’s-Land, was the Hong Kong border controls. I was directed to series of lanes marked “Foreign Guests” — a significant, if not literal, distinction — which were all staffed by men in their thirties, dressed in crisp white uniforms with dark blue caps. Smiles weren’t exactly abundant there, either, but they seemed somewhat less grudgingly given. Once I was checked through (again, efficiently), I walked out to the parking lot and boarded my bus… from the left side.

The distinctions don’t stop there, but they get even more boring, so I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, Hong Kong seems vastly different from neighbouring Shenzhen and mainland China in general — and at least for emigration/visa purposes, it is still a different country altogether.

This brings up the reason why I’m in Shenzhen today, when I’d rather be getting some work done, writing a different weblog entry, or (and this is very much more likely) massacring zombies in Wuhan. Thanks to the comparatively frosty relations between China and the U.S., my visa is good for a year, but only allows me to stay in the country for 30 days at a time. Fine for a vacation or even a backpacking trip, but things get a little more complicated if you want to stay here a little longer, like me. It boils down to requiring me to exit and re-enter mainland China every 30 days.

Fun.

Wuhan being in central China, the options for convenient exit/re-entry are limited at best, and when you add in the fact that I’d like to do it on the cheap, that just leaves Hong Kong. After a trial run by air which proved to be a huge and expensive hassle, I figured out that the most efficient way was to take a night train to Shenzhen, walk across the border to Hong Kong from Shenzhen station, walk back into Shenzhen, spend the day in Shenzhen proper, and then take the night train back to Wuhan. Total cost: about 500RMB/$73, cab fare to and from the Wuhan train station, plus a day’s entertainment and some duty-free liquor and candy.

With the timing of the trains and my bowels as they are, I essentially pay $75 a month to take a dump on Hong Kong.

This is my third trip out. The last two times I’ve done this, I’ve had other things to occupy my time — getting ripped off for a camera in Kowloon, meeting an uncle in Shenzhen — but this time I figured I’d have a nice, relaxing day off. I’d bring my laptop, spend a little time in a cafe somewhere writing and/or killing zombies, have a little dim sum and maybe a massage before hopping my train back.

Yeah… not so much.

First, the massage. There were plenty to be had. In fact, I couldn’t walk more than two steps within a three-block radius of the train station without being offered one in sotto voce, usually by a woman, while having a sheaf of photos of semi-nude “masseuses” waved at me.

I quickly learned the effectiveness of the “talk to the hand” gesture. You can say “No!” as many times as you want, they’ll still follow you for a block or so, yammering about how hot their masseuses are the whole way. But one “talk to the hand” and boom… peace and quiet.

Still, it only took being confronted by about five of these women before I became heartily sick of the idea of massages altogether, and fled to the relative safety of a McDonald’s.

So that was lunch. At 11am. After a double cheeseburger and Coke, I took a deep breath, charged out through the throngs of flesh merchants, and took refuge in an eerily empty mall, where I wandered around aimlessly for about half an hour before being told it was actually a housing development, and could I please leave because I was probably disturbing the residents.

Red-faced, I headed back out to the street, where I explored a couple alleyways, quickly turning back to the main roads every time because they were all jammed with massage touts, I suppose on their lunch break.

Now, after about an hour and a half of that, I’m back at the train station sitting in a Japanese fast-food noodle shop because they have wi-fi, and filling up on barley tea and Aleve because the trains idling three floors are making the entire building tremble, giving me a headache and making me nauseous. So much for the dim sum.

I should do a little planning next time.