But I did take a few more pictures of the trip down, although I missed the one I really want to get. Having said that, it's definitely a morning shot for the right lighting, so in the absence of Photoshop I guess I am constrained to fit myself in around reality. If I get it I'll add it, anyway.
I really like this train trip. The more often I take it the more I like it. Plonked down in the dining carriage, largely undisturbed with a whole table to work on, it's the best commute. It takes less time than flying - in fact it takes less time than the combined trips to and from the respective cities' (Guangzhou & Shenzhen) airports, each of which is roughly an hour out of town. I don't know what the flying time would be, not much obviously, it's only about 130 km. But still, I can get from my apartment to my "office" in two hours (in peak hour, longer at weekends), made up of 30 minutes on subways (one at each end), 1 hour of express train and 30 minutes of pfaffing - the "p" is silent - about buying tickets & waiting for things to happen. And unlike the plane trip, I can get a solid and comfortable 60 minutes work in - try using your laptop in the back of a taxi. If I ever have to go to Shanghai for work I will have to see if I can catch the night train - my boss always looks extremely stressed by the airport commute.
Also the train attendants are far far far more courteous than flight attendants have ever been, even thinking back to the days when budget plane travel didn't really exist. One of them chased me down the platform with my forgotten umbrella on Sunday. Now that is service.
The train travels fast - the camera blur is NOT my hand shaking, it's art. There's a video too, but my computer won't show it to me so I don't think I 'll publish it yet. If ever, I can't imagine how the video function in a still camera/mobile phone works at 200 kph, which is the top speed. It's actually quite hard to believe that you are travelling anything like that fast, until you try and take pictures and realise.
I may have mentioned something about the trip before in an earlier entry, but I probably didn't do it justice. It is a factory run, there isn't much doubt about that. But it seems to be a lot more besides.
There is certainly much more farming than I initially realised, and it is much more systematic than I first thought. They will be a bit worried about the rain in the north of the province, because the water levels look a lot higher last week than they had 2 weeks previously, and I doubt the main runoff is even halfway here yet. So there may be a few submerged farms, although there looks to be a fair bit of engineering (run off channels & empty sloughs) to deal with some of it. They are farming a river delta so I guess they have a pretty fair idea of how to organise it.
I can't decide if the farmers are living on their farms or not. These buildings certainly wouldn't make comfortable dwelling places, their defects are obscured by the circumstances of the photograph. And these are not the least solid structures on the trip, although somewhat paradoxically, it's the more flimsy ones which have caused me to think again. My original thought was no, but I'm weakening. There are lean-to's that are too far away from farms, with washing hanging on sticks nearby. I think here are some, a minority probably, of subsistence workers living in the shanties along the railway and trying to make a living with a bit of farming, a bit of labouring, a bit of recycling and a bit of whatever else goes.
When I first came to Guangzhou in 1990 it was an obvious border town, the areas around the railway station full of people who wanted to be somewhere else. It seemed much obviously poorer and nastier than Shanghai or Beijing. None of that is so clear now. Shenzhen has taken over as the real border town, although it doesn't have the despairing edge that GZ had in 1990 - well, I haven't seen it, more to the point. There's a lot more gloss around to distract you, even though the heavy rain makes Shenzhen into a disaster area. It's so bad that Guangzhou & Sydney start to look well engineered by comparison.
But there are borders and borders and the one between Guangzhou and Hong Kong is just one of them. It's pretty porous for me, although I haven't crossed it yet, and for the staff we have in Shenzhen weekends in Hong Kong are pretty much the norm. Bigger borders look to be the border between farmer and middle class, and maybe the border between those who have and those who don't have English. Although, to be fair, there are plenty of people making a good living out of trading with the West who don't have a word of English. But having English gives you access to a much better paid layer of clerical job - the English speaking wage slaves are definitely better off than their Chinese speaking counterparts. Some people are crossing the border from farmer to middle class via the role of guest labourer - but I'm betting that it's pretty few compared to all of those who are trying it out. There's an education border too, because there is no guarantee of getting an education after Year 9, and no advantages in not getting one.
Just outside Guangzhou, before the train really picks up speed, is this bridge which carries 8 lanes of highway over the railway line. On the other side of the bridge is pretty much a meadow - grass, not crops, a solitary palm tree in the middle. And behind it something a bit forest-like; I suppose it might be a plantation. I like this picture because it reminds me how much a frame can do for a picture - never mind all that black concrete because it makes the landscape inside it glow gently. It's a curious effect.
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