Trip to Shenzhen

Had a whole week trip to Shenzhen, China. It was rather an eye-opening experience to say the least. It was a place where there were mostly nothing when I was born, but now a mega city like the one I have not seen.

My expectation was a city packed with tech in a small high density area--a newly built tech industry town where I can see the whole thing from a vantage point and say "ok, this is Shenzhen." And I couldn't have been farther from the truth. The city was too big for it to be seen from one vantage point. From central place from 100th floor, I can see most of the sky-scrapers but not all because fog would cover some of the farther ones.

The city has around double the amount of population than in Seoul. Wikipedia says 17.5M but infrastructure in the city can probably host much more. Seoul is plateauing at around 10M and it is actually dwindling from it. Shenzhen's population is steadily growing and in 10 years of time, I think more and more people will move there. It is really not a "tech" scene, it is more of the largest cities in the world situation.

Tokyo has 41M population, so in a way SZ is behind but SZ's population is growing and Tokyo's population is not growing. And I would argue that SZ has more potential future residents than Tokyo has. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if SZ becomes bigger overall mega city than Tokyo.

Travel destination wise, SZ is quite largely lacking though. Uber does not work, and people don't speak english too much. You can use WeChat for payments (by linking your US credit cards) and call taxi using DiDi. However, you can't use Google or Google Maps. No ChatGPT, or your favorite US based AI services. So, once you are there, you are kind of a baby requiring an assistant from english speaking friends.

It was a first… It was a first time I felt so incapable of navigating around. On third day, I tried to order from Luckin Coffee place but I couldn't pay and I had to cancel my order. WeChat interface requires some slight learning curve and you may face difficulties if you try to use it at the spur of the moment.

Taxis don't speak English, so you will probably have trouble riding one without issues. You can get to places but without proper communication with the driver, you would likely be on an edge constantly.

Luckily, I was with my college friends and they did everything for me, so I had a blast, but it would be interesting if I traveled here alone. The place is huge and the streets are very wide. Things are very spread out. So, it is not easy like Hong Kong where you can easily travel by foot.

I did not ride on subway other than when I went to Guangzhou so not much I can say about the subway system but since it is all automated you can probably get around.

This is a city that is of half size of Tokyo and interestingly I did not see much foreign tourists. I think it is that it is quite far from US and it is that it is hard for foreign nationals to travel around.

Arts and culture districts like OCT Lofts were amazing too. There were so many boutique shops and the place was brimming with culture and energy.

Prices on goods and services were about 1/3-1/4 of what you would find in USA. Lots of good shopping opportunities.

It was very rewarding trip, and honestly I think I only covered a very tiny fraction of what is there in Shenzhen. I wish to travel there again. Perhaps after learning basic Mandarin for me to navigate around.

Sprited Dev 🐛