Spent all day up in Shenzhen yesterday and also ended up spending a fair amount of time on Shenzhen’s gleaming new MTR.
There’s this stereotype of mainlanders in HK on the MTR – that they push people aside rushing to get on or off the train, that they’re loud, that they’re breaking the rules by having family lunches while sitting there.
What I observed yesterday across multiple rides spanning more than 90 minutes were that people were incredibly polite. There was no pushing or shoving, no one eating or drinking, only 1 person yelling into a mobile phone, and no one playing games or watching videos without using ear buds or headphones (a disturbing trend that seems to be on the rise in HK).
If you haven’t taken the MTR in Shenzhen, it’s fast, clean, safe, cheap, easy to use – signs everywhere are in English as well as Chinese, announcements on the trains in English as well as Cantonese and Mandarin. Not to mention that it’s the quickest way to get out of Lo Wu and get to any of the more interesting areas there.
It may be a case of those on the train in Shenzhen being “every day people” vs. those who come to Hong Kong being rich snobs, I can’t say. I can say that I saw more people in Shenzhen getting up to offer their seats to mothers with children or old people. And that the, ahem, view on the Shenzhen MTR is a lot better than it is in a taxi.
Some predict shenzhen will be amalgamated with hk within 15 yrs.
If you travel there frequently, it’s worth picking up their equivalent of the Octopus card. Apparently there are plans to offer a joint card soon that can be used in both places, but I’m not sure when that will happen.
I take HK east rail every day with one of more of my kids and almost invariably it is a Mainland Chinese who gets up to offer one of them a seat.
You can already pick up the joint Octopus/”Shenzhen Tong” card in both HK and Shenzhen. Something like an 80 rmb deposit, more expensive than both card’s deposit combined.
People on the Shenzhen Metro are indeed more likely to give up their seat for someone who needs it. They are worse when it comes to escalators; they stand on both the left and right.