Wednesday, April 25, 2012

In and Around Shenzhen


Living in Shenzhen
For over three months, Shenzhen was my home. Shenzhen is a modern city and true it lived up to its expectations. It is a nice place to see the modern China with sky scrapers competing for space and very lush green gardens around the city.  There are hardly any old buildings noticeable in Shenzhen as I was told it is a new city however there is lots of construction was taking place almost on every other street.
Just like China, Shenzhen Special Economic Zone as it is commonly known  is really populated that you have to brace yourself for the crowded streets, metro and railway stations, especially during the rush hour, weekends and holidays if you want to experience the real Shenzhen.
However not to discourage anyone there are couple of places I identified as a must visit while in Shenzhen and these include

Seg Market
This is like the Electronics street of world, with a  number of malls on each side of the street all selling electronic from capacitors and mobile phones to play stations, digital cameras and mobile phones generally you can find any electronic equipment on this area. This area is commonly referred to as Huaqiang Bei I guess driving its name from the Street Huaqiang North

The famous SEG Market in Huaqiang North, Shenzhen Futian District.
Dongmen / Eastgate
This is a concentration of small boutiques and some big brand name shops selling shoes and garments, It is a relatively cheap market but care should be taken when buying items from here as some if not most are brand names knock offs or copies as they are commonly referred to in China. Dongmen can very be crowded over the weekends as seen in the photo below the day I visited there was hardly any room for one to walk comfortably.

Shoppers in at a crowded square in Dongmen during a weekend 
Louhu Commercial City
This is at the border of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, Just like in Dongmen the shops here sell similar stuff like copy designer Garments , shoes, watches, bags, perfumes however one has to really be careful if they want to buy genuine stuff to look closely at the product  and don’t forget to bargain as you can get a good deal.

Window of the World
This is a recreation area with different dedicated areas showing miniature statues like the Elf Tower, the Egyptians Pyramids, the Taj Mah in India among many other areas of the world, it is quite a large area divided into Asia, Europe, North America, South America areas all displaying tourist attractions that would take you to those parts of the world, you can take time and go explore it.  

Parks
There are quite a number of parks in Shenzhen, and I cannot say I went to all of them however I managed to get to some like Xianhu Botanical Park there is a big Buddist temple here worth visiting, also there are a number of other parks around Shenzhen worth visiting. It is best to visit them during the weekdays if you are not busy because on the weekend there are usually crowded and lots of activities taking place in the parks.

Well if you happen to visit China soon, and Shenzhen most especially I hope this can help point you where  to go when you have some time to spare.


1 comment:

  1. Welcome back,
    You must have enjoyed your stay in China!

    Moses

    ReplyDelete