How I was in Mainland China, for five minutes

Some time ago I made a short trip to Hong Kong. It was a lovely stay, Hong Kong similarly to Singapore is not only some other big city. It has the full package: impressive modern downtown architecture, interesting geography and access to nature, good food (but sorry, nothing to compare with Singapore), great museums... We ventured to make a short trip to the Mainland. 

China offers a 5-day visa for Visitors to Shenzhen on the land border with Hong Kong. I was thinking why not to use the opportunity to visit mainland China, even only for two days to see what Chinese were able to build in 30 years. 

We made all plans, booked a hotel, made an itinerary, took a train to the border at Lo Wu, left Hong Kong and crossed the bridge/official border, aaaand well, apparently French people are not anymore eligible for the visa since end of last year. That is not a problem for me being proudly Czech, but my girlfriend were not that lucky and was unfortunately born in France. 

The ridiculous fact is that this visa is designed for businessmen and as I study Chinese economy, I know that the biggest Chinese partner in Europe is in fact France. 

Too bad. But actually this wasn't the end. One would think that it wouldn't be a problem to get back to Hong Kong once you left the check point. Firstly, there is no designated way back so you must push your way through a huge crowd of Chinese returning home.

 Well, there they tell you that you actually cannot return and you must find an officer at the Chinese border. At this moment, they took our passport  and I started to recall the movie Terminal. Well I bet it's better to live at American airport than at Chinese border :). 

The bottom line is I was physically at the main land, my passport was even deep in China for more then 15 minutes. It must count :).