A bicycle trip along the South China Sea to the nuclear plant

When you’re posted to a city in a foreign country, where you don’t know a soul, you’ll try just about anything once. In the foreign service your first social contacts in a new posting tend to be colleagues at work. It’s understood that when a new officer arrives at post, everyone makes an effort to have him or her over for dinner or go out for lunch or do something to help the newbie feel welcome. At a small post where there’s only a few Canadian officers, this can be awkward when it’s clear that you have little in common with one another, but at a post like Delhi or Hong Kong where there’s a couple dozen officers, you usually find at least one or two people who share some of your interests. They become your entry points to creating a social network of your own, whether it be with people at other embassies, with other expats, or locals.

So it was that early in my posting to Kong Kong in 1992 I joined a group of expats on a 2-day cycling tour of the Shenzhen Special Autonomous Region of southern China. We started at the border and rode to the Daya Bay nuclear generating plant and back, following the coastal highway.  Had I known what I was getting myself into, I probably would have taken a pass. The distances themselves weren’t great – I think we only rode about 60km or so a day – but the road itself was one long, dusty construction site. There were new factories and buildings going up everywhere, the road had no shoulders, and we were passed by a continuous stream of lorries belching thick black exhaust.

Shenzhen was one of the first areas set aside by the Chinese government as a place where foreign companies and their joint-venture Chinese partners could establish businesses for exporting goods overseas. The People’s Republic was still in the early stages of opening up to foreign trade, and the idea was that this special autonomous region would facilitate economic expansion without disrupting the Communist system elsewhere in the country. Chinese citizens could not enter Shenzhen freely; they needed a special residency permit that could be obtained only through the sponsorship of an employer. Many of the workers were young women who came from other parts of the country to work in garment companies, shoe factories, and similar types of sweatshop labour. They lived in dormitories and might only get home once a year, during the Lunar New Year celebration. Wages were high relative to those available in the rest of China, though still a pittance by Hong Kong standards.

I exaggerated a moment ago when I said that Shenzhen was one large construction site – it only seemed that way. We did pass through some older villages, where the farmers still went out each day to tend their fish ponds, vegetable patches, and rice paddies, and the children looked after the poultry and livestock. We stopped at an abandoned outdoor athletic training complex, the parallel bars still standing amidst the weeds. We ended the day with a swim in the South China Sea, the water being somewhat polluted but the beach was considerably more litter-free than the ones back in Hong Kong. We spent the night at a half-completed hotel in a nearby fishing fishing village where the “fishing” boats consisted of small open craft with large outboard motors, and sat idly at their docks during the day. After dark, we heard them roaring out to sea. Smugglers, to be sure, but in what I had no idea.

Hot, tired and dusty from the ride, I tumbled into my not-so-clean bed and tried not to notice the roaches. In those days I never worried about bedbugs; it was understood that if you traveled any amount in southeast Asia, you were bound to share your bed with insects from time to time. But roaches made me feel squeamish (they still do). Breakfast in the hotel dining room the next morning consisted of congee (a rice porridge) with chunks of liver floating in it and chicken’s feet fried in chili garlic sauce. I’ve never liked chicken’s feet, nor am I a fan of congee, with or without the liver. Fortunately someone prevailed upon the restaurant to bring out some stir fried rice noodles with vegetables.

As you might imagine, we weren’t allowed inside the nuclear plant. It looked how you’d expect it to look. It had been built by a French company some years earlier. We rode up to the main gate, turned around, and rode back to the Hong Kong border, mostly following the same route we’d come. Although it was not an enjoyable trip, it was a memorable one, as you can see by the fact I’ve thought to write down something about it. It provided me an inkling of the great economic transformation that was underway in China, and which continues to this day.