| My new life, so far... |
FROM SHENZHEN, CHINA
[click here to view China map]
Shenzhen: Hong Kong's Bigger Twin
SHENZHEN, Oct 20 - My Chinese hosts and I left Shanghai in daylight on Oct 19, and arrived in Shenzhen at night, after a two-hour flight (click here for China map).
Shenzhen? Where's that, you may be wondering. If so, you're not alone. A month ago, when someone suggested I go to Shenzhen to do some market research because the IT market here is growing fast here, I had to look up on the map where it was (see the map). And I am supposed to be a "world traveler," if you believe common gossip. :-)
What I also didn't know until last night was that Shenzhen is actually bigger than Hong Kong. Much! Shenzhen has a population of about 10 million vs. Hong Kong's six million. It seems that it seems Chinese cities come in only two sizes: BIG and BIGGER. :-)
Anyway, Shenzhen is practically a twin-city of Hong Kong (only about a half-hour drive away). Thus it has a much warmer climate than Shanghai, not to mention Beijing, the latter capital city more than four hours away by air (click here for China map). That was evident by the warm, humid evening air that enveloped us outside the airport terminal. Even though it is already the second half of October, it felt as if I had arrived in the tropics. Alas, I also smelled pollution...
In the morning, I "saw" it as we drove to one of my business meetings on the west side of Shenzhen. (Since that part is close to water, some of it is also humidity. Still, this is what they look when you combine them).
Here's another example of what happens when you combine urban "progress," symbolized by automobiles and freeways, and 16 million people in a relatively small area. Add to it high humidity, and today's 95F (35C) felt like 115F in Phoenix, only worse. At least in Phoenix you can breathe.
Okay, so that's the worst of it. Now on to some prettier things...
This, for example, is a view of a large IT industrial park in west Shenzhen.
This is, for example, one of the companies I visited (Skyworth if a well known brand of TV sets in China).
The area also has nice hotels and restaurant, such as this Holiday Inn where we had lunch. As we were going up the stairs to a private dining room, a young lady was evidently decorating this part of the lobby for a wedding.
An hour or so later, most of the lobby...
...and the second floor was decorated in pretty pink.
"Do Chinese brides wear pink?" I asked a young man who lunched with us.
"Not really. Red is more of a traditional wedding dress color," he replied. "But pink is more romantic," he added smiling broadly.
Later on this evening, we bumped into several other wedding parties... (see Weddings Galore...)
On our drive back to the city center, clusters of honeycomb high rise apartment buildings...
...alternated with clusters of honeycomb office skyscrapers.
And sometimes you could see clusters of both.
"Ten years ago, this was all farmland," one of my local hosts told me, a Hong Kong resident. "Even five years ago, I don't remember seeing nearly as many buildings."
And then every once in a while, you see older apartment building, such as this "communist-style" block. The most amazing thing to me was that all of them have metals bars around the balconies. So as in a prison, a resident can't look outside without looking through the bars. And that's not just here. I saw thousands of apartment balconies that all looked like large prison cells. I felt constricted even just thinking about what it would feel to have to live like that.
Closer to downtown, one could see more greenery sprinkled in between the giant skyscrapers.
We ended our journey where we had started - at my Shangri-La hotel close to this enormous Shenzhen train station. Note the big Yahoo! ad even here...
And now, here are some 360-degree views of the city as seen from the lounge at the top (31st) floor of my hotel...
Those little "ants" that you can see on this big square in front of the train station, are the local commuters going to and fro work. The Shenzhen bus station with its green buses is also to your left.
As Vincent and I walked up the stairs to "the best restaurant in Shenzhen," according to my local hosts, we saw two more wedding parties, each sporting the same pink decorations as those we saw during lunch on the west side of town. Vince said that in China, people like to get married on a day the Chinese calendar pinpoints for such purpose (in order to ensure eternal marital bliss, kids, etc.).
Guess Friday, Oct 20, is one such day... the day of weddings galore. (The day also happens to have a special meaning for Karen and I, but we'll keep the details to ourselves).
Meanwhile, back to Shenzhen, here's what Vince and I saw on our way to our dinner table...
On the second floor, we literally had to walk through the receiving line of this first wedding. As I turned around, I snapped this picture. The young couple, along with the best man and the bridesmaid, seem to pose for me.
Just around the corner, where our restaurant was, we ran into this bride and her bridesmaids. They were also all too happy to pose for a photo as we walked by.
Finally, we had to walk through this wedding reception/dinner scene to get to our private dining room in the back of the restaurant. When I took this picture, the party was just getting under way. By the time we finished our dinner, everybody at this reception seemed a lot happier and definitely louder. :-)
And on this happy note, I sing off from Shenzhen...
