Shenzhen, China

From my out-of-date Lonley Planet China: "China's richest city," "was no more than a tiny fishing village until it won the equivalent of the National Lottery and become a SEZ [Special Economic Zone] in 1980,"may not have much culture but is not totally devoid of it." Another distinguishing characteristic of Shenzhen is that it is China's second greenest city, with the second highest percentage of its area being parks and gardens. In retrospect, this is probably Shenzhen's only redeeming quality.

Why did I go there at all? There is no train directly from Hong Kong to Guilin so I was forced to stop somewhere and I thought some time in "China's richest city" would be interesting. I could not have been more wrong if I said Shenzhen was not totally devoid of culture (it is).

Disclaimer: It is possible that Shenzhen was kind of shock to the system. I had just spent more than two weeks in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau, where English is prevelant, people are kind and volunteer their assisatance, and, in short, traveling is easier. This is not true of Shenzhen, as part of mainland China. I dismiss this point, however, because I did not have any of the feeling I have about Shenzhen for Beijing, which was my first Chinese destination.

In trying to figure out why Shenzhen is at the bottom of my list of Chinese destinations, I came up with this, admittedly terrible, analogy: Shenzhen is like that girl that you think you like. She has a come good qualities. For example, she has a good, respectable job (China's richest city) and is good enough looking (lots of parks and gardens). However, you do not know this girl all that well. As soon as you get to know her a little bit you realize she is crazy, mean, and kills baby seals. OK, Shenzhen does not kill baby seals as far as I know, but you get what I mean. Shenzhen has some things going for it but it is missing something crucial as well.

Other than the gardens and parks, there is basically nothing here. And the parks and gardens, as they are will just about everywhere in China, all look the same to the untrained (my) eye. Yeah, they are nice, but I can only look at so many
gardens.

Luckily I did not have to spend long here, though it was longer than I would have liked, and moved on to Guilin.