Day 4
Today’s outing was to the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen. The purpose was two-fold: firstly to see what all the great shopping hype was about and secondly to meet my Bridge Base Online friend Michael Sun and his wife Ma Lan.

The shopping was as we’d been warned, stall-holders accosting you from the moment you left the train station. It reminded much of the Marrakesh I visited in 1987. The touts knew how to get Eddie’s attention – they would mention Game Boy and his head would do 360s.

After shopping we caught a taxi to Michael and Lan’s house and then walked to a terrific restaurant for Dim Sum.

Linda received street cred points from Lan for being able to order in Mandarin and the kids got style points for using chopsticks. Lunch was long and plentiful, not to mention delicious. Afterwards we walked to large upmarket shopping centre and had ice creams at KFC.