Shenzhen is the city this whole site started with. In 1980 it was a set of market towns and fishing villages next to the Hong Kong border; today it is a metropolis of more than 17 million people and the manufacturing and hardware capital of the world. Huawei, Tencent, DJI, BYD and thousands of smaller electronics firms are based here, and the average resident is strikingly young – most people were not born in the city.
For a visitor that makes Shenzhen an unusual place: very modern, very fast, not much old architecture, but with an excellent metro, huge parks, a real coastline in the east, and the markets of Huaqiangbei and Dongmen. The official language is Mandarin, though you will hear Cantonese too, and the climate is subtropical – hot and wet from May to September, mild and pleasant from October to March.
I lived in Shenzhen for about five years. The articles in this section are written from that time and from more recent visits.
Guides in this section
- Flight from the Netherlands to Shenzhen
- Shenzhen Airport
- Shenzhen driverless robotaxis
- Shenzhen Metro
- Shenzhen tax-free
