Guangzhou, China – 23rd October 2012

Went over the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen for an overnight stop. Despite all the planning I did to find some decent photo spots and even enlisting the help of a local Chinese photographer, Eric Wang, it was a complete waste of time. Eric had to go off on a trip so couldn’t make it so we used his guides to try to find the spots. In the searing 90F heat we walked to the morning spot, a construction site. To cut a long story short we were told in no uncertain terms (in Chinese) to get out of the place ! So we hired a taxi (extremely cheap) to drive us around the perimeter fence to try to find a spot. No joy. We did know of a great afternoon spot though where a lot of Eric’s shots were taken so all hope was not lost. It is the construction site to the new terminal and we started walking along the fence to get to it. After 15 mins we were approaching the spot when suddenly loudspeakers blared out some ominous warning in Chinese. We walked on a bit and the message was repeated ! We didn’t need any translations to know what they wanted us to do. So we gave up and got the train to Shenzhen centre and then the bullet train to Guangzhou. Better luck tomorrow we thought.

We got up in the morning ready to go to the famous link taxiway spot but to our horror it’s now a construction site and totally levelled. No mound to stand on to look over the fence. So we walked around the fence a bit to get some landing shots. It was very slow though so after an hour of seeing just four arrivals we left. The other runway was the main arrival runway that day but we didn’t bother. Too tired and grumpy. These were the landing shots I managed….

We decided to get over to the terminal and see if we could check in early for our flight to Shanghai.

At the terminal we tried to get some shots from the ends of the terminal but one end had thick fencing and the other end we were moved away by police again. Jeez this country is so difficult to get photos !

With a massive stroke of luck we managed to check in 5 hours early so we could at least try airside. Bingo ! There were decent spots to take shots up the terminal fingers and we managed to get quite a few shots.

That was most of the stuff we got then we were on our way to Shanghai on a China Southern A321.