It takes exactly 24 hours door to door from Chateau Limey to the Shangri-La hotel in Zhongshan, China. These are the things I learned in my 1st trip to the other side of the planet:-

Flying (15 and a half hours!!)
Your bum gets to a point where it cannot get any more numb after 13 hours in the air.
The airline food gets more foreign as you travel further away. You are in the air enough time to watch half of the movies in a Cineplex.
Hong Kong airport smells like chow mein. All Hong King airport security guards look like Jet Li (and smell like chow mein) You do NOT land surrounded by buildings at the airport - that is the old airport apparently - you are at the other end of the island(s) in a huge complex and will walk for about a mile after landing before you even see your bags.
Hong Kong
Ever wonder what happened to all the old Formula One & Cart racing drivers? They are employed to drive buses and taxis in Hong Kong!!
You can buy 8oz tubs of sweetcorn in Macdonalds - More alarmingly Macdonalds looks and tastes exactly the same as it does anywhere else
Hong Kong drive on the left like real British people do, and their road signs are all the British pictures and signs with Chinese translation under them. In mainland China they drive on the right - I am not sure how they work the bridge between the two but I bet it gets interesting at rush hour.
There are so many boats in the harbours around Hong Kong if you lined them up you could probably walk to China instead of having 1 and a half hours on a bumpy ferry.
If you took a dead skunk, and fed it to another skunk, and then locked that skunk in a steam bath for two days you would know what Kowloon Ferry Terminal smells like.
China
You can get 10 people in a saloon car in China, and at least 4 on a moped. Women passengers on mopeds sit side-saddle.