Tell me about your experience living in Shenzhen

Discussion Greater Forumosa
41

Hmm, you think SerpentSaffer might be looking to sell bridges in Shenzhen?
Actually, I’ve heard a few positive comments about Shenzhen in recent years, that although still being far from paradise on earth, it has improved a lot.
I agree with the Surfer. It’s nice to have some new blood on forumosa and a different take on things.[/quote]

Thanks guys :slight_smile: haha, if you think I’m bad going on about how great Shenzhen is, you should hear how I go on about how great Taiwan is to the locals here (and they also have their stupid preconcieved ideas about Taiwan which aren’t true) :slight_smile: I love both places, I just don’t like the negative shyte people say about my city (if it were all true I would agree).

Having been to both places I can simply report what I’ve seen. BTW, expect to see me in Taiwan next year around March/April, I’m planning another bike roadtrip

42

[quote]I think perhaps most of you missed the part where I said I lived in a slum for a few months, of course I know the real seedy shit side of Shenzhen, I was sleeping on the floor of a filthy slum apartment and my Chinese friend who I was living with, well his girlfriend was a prostitute who for instance while we were all watching TV together would get a phone call and have to dissapear for a few hours then come back later (also she’d been bought from her rural parents by a pimp… let’s just say shitty shitty stuff… and she was such a nice girl too)… it was an uncomfortable and shitty experience to live in and see the kind of crap that goes on in the underbelly of the city. But that’s my point, that is the underbelly, and if you want to get involved in things like drugs and prostitution you’ll start seeing it very quickly, however if you just want to live a normal life, go out partying have a good job, go shopping etc etc, this city is amazing. And yes the air is much cleaner than Taipei, and the city is very green littered with big impressive parks and bird watching mangroves etc etc it’s been given some world heritage award or something (skips my memory as I’m not a treehugger) for being a green city.

Another thing that many of you are saying is that you can isolate yourself from the crap and stick to “clean areas” This is true and many foreigners for instance just live in Nanshan, Shekou (about 80 to 90% of all foreigers in fact) but they miss out on all the fun, I love exploring the local small villages and sitting on the side of the road drinking a beer at some grubby little 烤吧 chatting to the locals, my point being that even if you immerse yourself in the dirtier so called “real China” areas, you’ll still be treated well by the locals, you’ll still be safe and still be able to enjoy yourself. (Watch out for pickpockets in crowded areas, but if you have common sense you would anyway).[/quote]

So which part did I get wrong again? I find no glamour in the underbelly, nor romance in honor among thieves. But, kudo’s to you for going out and seeing the, “real China”, that is out there and I am glad that you can still see the humanity through all the grit.

Spend some more time in Taiwan and you’ll realize you’re a bit off base interms of the environment/pollution. Either that or you’ve been watching too much CCTV.

43

And you can piss off with the passive-aggressive malarkey, too. My notions are not stupid, nor are they preconceived. They are the result of two decades of feedback from people I trust a whole shedload more than you, bubba.

44

[quote]I think perhaps most of you missed the part where I said I lived in a slum for a few months, of course I know the real seedy shit side of Shenzhen, I was sleeping on the floor of a filthy slum apartment and my Chinese friend who I was living with, well his girlfriend was a prostitute who for instance while we were all watching TV together would get a phone call and have to dissapear for a few hours then come back later (also she’d been bought from her rural parents by a pimp… let’s just say shitty shitty stuff… and she was such a nice girl too)… it was an uncomfortable and shitty experience to live in and see the kind of crap that goes on in the underbelly of the city. But that’s my point, that is the underbelly, and if you want to get involved in things like drugs and prostitution you’ll start seeing it very quickly, however if you just want to live a normal life, go out partying have a good job, go shopping etc etc, this city is amazing. And yes the air is much cleaner than Taipei, and the city is very green littered with big impressive parks and bird watching mangroves etc etc it’s been given some world heritage award or something (skips my memory as I’m not a treehugger) for being a green city.

Another thing that many of you are saying is that you can isolate yourself from the crap and stick to “clean areas” This is true and many foreigners for instance just live in Nanshan, Shekou (about 80 to 90% of all foreigers in fact) but they miss out on all the fun, I love exploring the local small villages and sitting on the side of the road drinking a beer at some grubby little 烤吧 chatting to the locals, my point being that even if you immerse yourself in the dirtier so called “real China” areas, you’ll still be treated well by the locals, you’ll still be safe and still be able to enjoy yourself. (Watch out for pickpockets in crowded areas, but if you have common sense you would anyway).[/quote]

So which part did I get wrong again? I find no glamour in the underbelly, nor romance in honor among thieves. But, kudo’s to you for going out and seeing the, “real China”, that is out there and I am glad that you can still see the humanity through all the grit.

Spend some more time in Taiwan and you’ll realize you’re a bit off base interms of the environment/pollution. Either that or you’ve been watching too much CCTV.[/quote]

Haha, thanks, and yes I could be off on the environment thing, but seriously I found it difficult to breathe in all that traffic and had black grit on my face after a day riding, I’m just talking from first hand experiences… actually I took a lot of youtube videos while driving around Taipei and Taoyuan etc, you can check them out, you’ll see the air quality was pretty shyte in Taipei, and don’t even get me started on that Linkou place 林口 (It could just have been a bad week for air quality though). Anyway my comment was on Taipei specifically, I drove out one morning to watch the sunrise over taipei… and yes the air quality again was a little shyte.

Sunrise over taipei:

Pic of Taipei from the 101:

Okay now I know this isn’t fair because I don’t have a sunrise picture of Shenzhen, but I’ll get up early and take one tomorrow, here’s a picture I took during the day from the top of my building:

and one more of the actual city also from my building, please note that I used the same camera to take all four pictures:

45

So you have a pic of Taipei affected by duststorms from China. Yes, we get those every year for a few days. Shenzen doesn’t? Today, Taipei is at least as clear as your Shenzen pics.
The following is more like the Shenzen I’m aware of. The piece is two years old. I’m willing to bet its only got worse since then.
Not that I give a shit one way or the other. I’ll never go there, probably.

[quote]Today, Shenzhen is one of China’s largest cities, with a population pushing 18 million — almost twice the population of Los Angeles County — and a landscape of skyscrapers, luxury apartments and shopping malls.

Hundreds of square miles of fields have been drained and covered with factories that churn out a significant portion of the world’s products, from computers to clothing and toys. The city has averaged an annual economic growth of 28 percent since 1980, the fastest in China.

But Shenzhen speed also represents China’s dilemma. The fast profits have come with problems. On many days, the air is thick with smog. The number of cars has nearly doubled since 2003, and streets lock into snarls of exasperated motorists. Violent crime and the incidence of HIV/AIDS has surged.

Experts see the city as a test case for whether China will be able to solve problems ranging from massive pollution to growing labor disputes.

At a park in the city center, 55-year-old Peng Li remembered that when she moved to the city in 1987, “it was always clear.”

“But now . . . well, now you can see what’s happened,” she said, sweeping a hand across the polluted gray skyline.

Other residents complain that lack of social welfare has created a society where poorer citizens are left out.

Some 13 million migrant laborers work in Shenzhen’s factories and produce almost all of the city’s wealth, but they have almost no access to public services, including reduced-cost health care and schooling, said Liu Kaiming, director of Shenzhen’s Institute of Contemporary Observation.

“The system has created a huge group of people who are treated as second-class citizens,” he said.[/quote]

46

Like I said, it could’ve been a bad week or something.

I really don’t want to get into a tit for tat thing, I was only commenting on air quality, and specifically inside the Special economic zone, where there are no factories and the stuff that article is on about I won’t deny, but air quality here is and always has been good (at least for the last 4 years), with the occasional bad day (which is why I think Taipei was having a bad week or something when I was there).

Please post some pics of clear skies over Taipei (this isn’t a challenge, I genuinely want to see what it’s like).

47

I think one of the biggies for people living in Taiwan is we don’t have to worry saying something like ‘you can set-up a VPN’ to avoid censorship’, things like that. The other very irritating thing in China is that it is hard to have a conversation if you are based in Taiwan and you are proud of living here and stuff in Taiwan because they often pick it up the wrong way, basically too patriotic. THey miss all the good stuff , start opening their mouths and showing their lack of education and understanding of the world, hard to make friends with those type of people. By moving to China we all have to compromise more than we like. The other issue I found recently is that China is not open-minded regarding visa applications, making it more and more difficult and investing and running companies in China is a lot more controlled compared to Taiwan, they whack on big taxes on everything and put capital controls on your company. Taiwan and HK are far superior for doing business unless you have to be based in China (I guess you are doing quality control work or sourcing). Shenzhen looks nice from your pics and video, I’m sure it’s very liveable.

Taipei has bad air quality, that’s undeniable (mostly from local vehicles/industry but some is from the China ‘brown cloud’), I have moved away and suffer from allergies a lot less now. When I was in Shenzhen it did seem better than the other cities I have visited in China.

48

Sunset from the teahouses in the south:

Slightly cloudy, not hazy (don;f forget it’s very humid here):

Again, from the south of the city looking over the entire thing (that’s the ocean on the other side of those mountains in the distance):

49


Those mountains are at least 20km away.

50

Bloody awesome pictures mate!

Guess I was just there at the wrong time (first impressions and all that).
I have hundreds of awesome pictures of Shenzhen, but I won’t bother posting them unless anyone wants to see them.

51

Yes you can get great sunny days in Taipei with clear skies. Unfortunately they are rather rare and it’s usually a bit hazy and in the winter it is grey and rains a lot, the same can probably be said for Shenzhen or most cities of course. The problem with Taipei is it in a basin surrounded by mountains and in the summer the ozone and vehicular pollution is quite severe.

52

I spent 10 weeks straight in Shenzen and perhaps nearly 4 months in total there this year…

Rare to have a clear sunny day there

53

Bitan hands down beats SZ or anywhere else across the Strait. Rainforest in your backyard. :sunglasses: :sunglasses: If you want buzz, the MRT is a sway away. And let’s not forget the famous “jug band lounge”, the nicest 7/11 in convenistan. Roti from 'thula, brew at the lounge, river stroll. You might see a celeb, like B9 and a pooch. Or scoot a fandango on the back road to Wulai.

SZ? :ponder:

54

So how about this: If you had to pick a metro stop to live beside in SZ, which one?

Unrelated, anyone know when the extensions to the metro are due to open? Why is this massive town that is filled with expats such a black hole on the internet… Or is that a big fat hint to newcomers?

:ponder:

55

The bits I’ve seen are better put together (and obviously newer) than Taipei. It seems to be pretty nice along the coastal strip. But the train station…urrgh.

56

ughh. thats a lot of pics loading.

Shenzhen Bay has fantastic weather. everytime I’ve gone thru, in various seasons, have been clear skies and very sunny.

57

[quote=“Dalianon”]Let the following speak their thousand words
[/quote]
Really? Thousand words? I was thinking more like 33:

SZ is like a used car dealership, lot’s of eye candy on the rare bright sunny day, but don’t look under the hood of anything, you won’t like what get.

58

^^ is that the best you can come up with? Let me show you how it’s done:

On a related note, this is still Shenzhen:

http://i344.photobucket.com/albums/p340/Dalianon/Shenzhen%20photos

59

Geez I’m gonna post way too many Shenzhen pics

[color=#008000]Mod: Photos deleted. Post one or two, and a link to your album. Do not post 7,000 largely identical photos in the same thread. Thank you.[/color]

60

Apologies for spamming this thread with Shenzhen pics

[color=#008000]Mod: Don’t apologize. Just stop.[/color]