Predictably my Bullet train went very quickly. Guilin station was a nightmare though, thousands of passengers packed like sardines in a hideously overcapacity station. The only slight annoyance on the Bullet Train was the 'little emperor' on the opposite aisle making his fair share of noise. We got up to 330km/h as we raced across 600km of Guangxi and Guangdong in just about 3 hours. Despite the tunnels, I got to see lots of beautiful Karst scenery as well as the factory of the world - the endless urban area of Guangzhou Foshan and Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta. Skyscraper after skyscraper, factory after factory, polluted river after polluted river. On arrival in Shenzhen it took forever to find a taxi to hostel. Shenzhen has been tough on the wallet and is rather dull so I'll be leaving swiftly for Hong Kong tomorrow. But this city is the definition of modern China. In 1980 it was a village of about 20,000 people. Now it has 20million, making it the fastest growing city ever. Whatsmore, it's the Silicon Valley of China. 2 key notable things have happened in Shenzhen.

First, dinner. It set me back a lot more than I hoped but I'll remember it forever. I walk into the restaurant and the exuberant waitress starts barking at me in Chinese. I follow her to the back of the restaurant and I get Google Translate out. I think I order duck. She then shows me a variety of packaged ingredients i.e. meat, various vegetables, noodles etc. I, thinking I've ordered duck. They get a bit irate and insist I order something, so I order Rice. It turns out, I've only ordered rice. I local with a smattering of English, correctly concerned I've accidentally ordered a plate of rice for dinner then assists me in ordering a hotpot. A waitor periodically uses his translate app to tell me how to 'cook my own hotpot'. See, in this restaurant, the centre of the table was hollowed out for a massive bowl that the chefs would place hot water, half lemony and half spicey. Then, you put the cold ingredients into the hot bowl and make your own hot pot. Further, there's an assortment of disgusting sauces you can add to your ingredients. The spicy was wayyyyy to spicy, possibly the spiciest thing I've ever eaten. But, it did fill me up and the whole experience was quite funny.

The second notable thing was walking across a film set in the middle of a dramatic scene. I'd thought the people walking across where just locals, and that the camera crew were allowing a normal street scene to take place. That wasn't the case and I may have destroyed an entire tape, judging by the shout 'get out of the way!' What a way to say goodbye to mainland China!