A Blog About Hong Kong and Mainland China

zhuhai waterfront

If you look for a city in Southern China for relaxation, away from the tourist crowd, you may want to come to Zhuhai. 

Bordering Macau to the South, Zhuhai was named among the earliest Special Economic Zones in China in the 70s. But its development has been slow compared to Shenzhen, another Southern China city, just across the border from Hong Kong. The fact that its main avenue Lovers Road surprisingly does not have busy traffic says a lot about the city. 

And that is why I find the city laidback and calm. It has a beautiful and long waterfront along the Lovers Road. In the morning, you only see a few locals exercising here. Don’t the Zhuhai people like exercising? If it is in Hangzhou or Guangzhou, the waterfront in the morning would be teeming with people jogging, playing Taichi or doing all sorts of exerecises. Not in Zhuhai.

yeli island

The city has newly developed a Yeli Island (野狸島), which is named Mingting Park (名亭公園), near the Xiangzhou Fishing Port, and across from the Lovers Road Central. The island park is open to the public for free. Though nothing much to see on the island, strolling around is surely relaxing, with some nice sea view to appreciate.

This is a brief post updating the scene of Hong Kong’s major mode of transportation – train. 

Previously, Hong Kong’s train transport had two systems, that under the KCRC (Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation), which controlled the current East Rail line from Hung Hom to Lo Wu, and that under the MTRC (Mass Transit Railway Corporation), which was basically the city’s underground train system across Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. 

Late last year, the two corporations merged to become the MTR. So now all the train stations in Hong Kong are called MTR stations, regardless of being underground or not. 

Starting only a few days ago, with the bid to integrate the two systems, passengers can use one ticket for riding across different train lines, without going out of the station and going in again at some major transferal stations such as Kowloon Tong. 

Check out the MTR website for more info.

Hotels in Zhuhai, a southern China city neighbouring Macau and Hong Kong, are not as expensive as those in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, and you can find quite a few hotels here which have seaviews and yet the charges are reasonable. 

If you look for a hotel in Zhuhai to relax, I would like to recommend this hotel to you - Zhuhai Maihao International Hotel (珠海邁豪國際酒店, 91 QingLu Middle Road). The hotel is pretty new, opened in 2006. When I asked the taxi driver to take me to the hotel, he was at a loss. “Is this a new hotel?” he asked. 

The hotel is wonderfully located, just five-minue taxi ride from the Jiuzhou ferry terminal (less than RMB20), along the tree lined Qinglu Road (Lover Road), facing the Xiangzhou Bay (香洲灣), and the island park Mingting Park （名亭公園）. 

If you book the hotel through elong, the room charge is RMB370 for Mondays to Fridays, and RMB430 for Saturdays and Sundays, for a seaview room.

You can also make the booking through the hotel website, but the price would be slightly higher. 

The hotel lobby is not as elegant as a four-star hotel can be, but the hotel rooms are just gorgeous. It has carpet to ceiling window, opening to the bay, with fishing boats parked around. The bathroom has window glass open to the bedroom, and to the seaview. You can have a very open view even when taking a shower.

The room is spacious. Its broadband internet worked immediately on my computer once I put in the cable provided. And the internet was fast. Three floors of the hotel are dedicated to non-smoking rooms. So you can enjoy a non-smoking and spacious seaview room with free internet. The staff are also friendly. I don’t think you should ask for more for this price.

But mind you that the TV in the hotel room has no international channels such as BBC or CNN, and the dining and recreation facilities look a bit poor. Also, there are cracks and marks on the wall in my room, not to mention a big splash of yellow water stains on the wall near the window (a result of rain seeping from outside the window?). It seems that in China, buildings for public use get run down easily, no matter how new they are, as a result of sub-standard of the buiding material and how people use these buildings.

Since there has been interest in the transport between Hong Kong International Airport and Shenzhen, I thought I would post on the topic. So here it goes.

In terms of border corssing bus transport, no service is better than that offered by Hong Kong China Travel Service (CTS). It runs frequent bus service between Hong Kong International Airpot and different hotel spots in Shezhen/Shenzhen Airport via the border of Huangguang (shenzhen side)/Lok Ma Chau (hong kong side).

There is a Mainland Coach Station in Terminal 2 of the Hong Kong International Airport. This is the boarding point. For ticketing, if you are in Terminal 1, go to the Arrival Hall Counter A09 (CTS counter); if you are in Terminal 2, go to the Coach Station C05. 

There are at least 3 CTS buses you can take. I quote one of the buses below. For more choices and details pls check out here

Bus 1: 

Schedule of bus from Hong Kong International Airport (via Huanggang) to Shenzhen Bao Li Lai Hotel:

08:05; 09:05; 10:05; 11:05; 12:05; 13:05; 14:05; 15:05; 17:05; 18:05; 19:05; 20:05

Schedule of bus from Shenzhen Bao Li Lai Hotel to Hong Kong International Airport (via Huanggang):

06:40; 07:40; 09:10; 10:10; 11:10; 12:10; 13:10; 14:10; 15:10; 16:10; 17:10: 18:10

The bus fare is HK$100-150 per journey (Hong Kong International Airport to Huanggang) – early and late buses will charge more.  

The last bus to depart Hong Kong International Airport for the Huanggang border/Shenzhen is 22:00. If you arrive in Hong Kong later than this time, then you may need to think about another way to travel to Huanggang, such as by taking the Hong Kong MTR.

The Japanese brand Lotte Koala Buscuits are the favorite of children. My niece often eat them. Now, even they are found contaminated by the industrial chemcial melamine. It is not a small shock to me. It is scary that how much of poisonous chemcials has entered our bodies, without our knowledge. This time it is about melamine, and who knows next time what it is about.

The mainland melamine-tainted milk scandal is causing four death and thousands of infants sick on the mailand, while in Hong Kong, four kids have been dignosed with kidney stone. The Hong Kong government has to provide free check up service to all the kids in the territory. 

You may be surprised at the food scandal, but Hong Kong people should not.

The fact is Hong Kong has seen a few food scares over the years due to import from China – the vegetables grown with too much pesticide in Guangdong causing peole falling sick, the bird flu, the malachite green in farmed fish, as well as problems with the quality of imported mainland eggs. It is just telling that this city needs desperately to improve its food security and inspection system, in particular related to the import from China.

I guess every thing is double-edged. When the city benefits from its proximity to China, it also suffers from this proximity.

 So to eat local to stay well? This at least is impossible to apply to the poor in China. Now the poor Chinese families are faced with a tough question - what to feed their babies. They cannot afford the expensive foreign brands of infant formula, and at the same time they cannot feed their babies the unsafe local brands. That is really poor. 

China visa restrictions on foreigners in HK will be lifted from Oct 16, 2008, according to the report of South China Morning Post today (Sept 22). 

The report quoted a vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Travel Agents, as saying that the central government might have decided to wait until after the National Day holiday to relax the visa application processes.

Under the restrictions, multiple visas and short visit visas to shenzhen are suspended. Also, Visa applicants have to produce advance hotel reservations and return-flight bookings. Nationals from 33 countries including South Africa, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia can no longer obtain visas in Hong Kong unless they are residents.

Mengniu is the No.1 diary brand, and also one of the most prominent brands in China. The brand is as famous as Lenovo in the country. Its milk product is not only popular in Mainland China, but also in Hong Kong. Here in Hong Kong, my father drinks its yogurt drink; my company’s pantry has Mengniu’s milk; one of my colleagues just told me the milk in her home’s fridge is always Mengniu’s milk. “Because it tasted good,” she said.

The company’s President Niu Geng Sheng often toured the country and Hong Kong to speak about brand management. It publishes Corporate Social Responsibility report, and actively goes green – it has just built the world’s largest methane power plant using cow-dung (investment RMB 45M /US$5.7 M).

So when I learnt of the news this morning that not only its baby formula, but also its milk are found contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine, it is a real shock to me.

How could it be possible to trust a Chinese brand anymore, if even a brand like Mengniu cannot be trusted?

The investigation by the quality watchdog of China, the General Administration for Quality Supervision, just found that 11 out of 121 batches of milk from Mengniu contain melamine.

If you ever live in China, you would know that three diary brands dominate the market: Mengniu, Yili and Guangming. In the supermarkets in China, it is very likely they are the only diary brands you can find.

The saddening thing about China’s milk scandal is that all its major diary manufacturers – Mengniu, Yili and Guangming – are involved. Yili’s and Guangming’s milk are also found contaminated by China’s General Administration for Quality Supervision.

In Hong Kong, tests conducted by the Food Safety Centre have found Yili’s milk products contaminated and the authority has asked the distributor to recall all the company products. Milk products by other mainland companies are still in the testing process.

By the way, here in Hong Kong, I eat Yili’s ice stick. Thank God, only occasionally.