China, Part 4: Hong Kong
After seeing more branches of my family tree in Jiangmen than I ever have in my life, we sojourned by bus to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is about a 4 hour bus ride away, considering you have to stop in Shenzhen to go through customs and immigration. One of the most interesting things I saw here was the groups of commuter students. And by students, I mean six year old schoolchildren. While we lugged our suitcases off the bus, into the customs building, and waited on lines, we saw herds of kids dressed in matching school uniforms and bright bookbags and ID badges running through the building to get from the Shenzhen side to the Hong Kong side, and vice versa. My dad said these were kids who lived on either the mainland China or the Hong Kong side and had to commute to and from school every day on the opposite side. Wild! I thought it was bad just passing through once and waiting on lines and getting my passport stamped and all that, but these kids had to do it at...