Evelyne&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. Months spent traveling the back roads of China. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and critical commentary. The REAL Chinese people you do not know!
Shenzhen
Note: I lived and worked in Shenzhen, 2016-2019. Amazing place!
Photos
#1: two days ago this was a normal street and BOOM, the Chinese go to work. Instead of taking months and years like in the Judeo-West, this project will get finished in days and weeks.
In the Judeo-West, there is a lot of corruption in public infrastructure projects, which is a huge problem. In Cherbourg, where new bus stops took 3-4 years to complete, forcing the closure of many small businesses along the routes, owners reported seeing the same holes being dug, refilled, dug and refilled several times. By slowing down construction and corrupting the officials with bribes, contractors can get cost overruns paid for by the citizens.
Given the speed with which Chinese construction projects move, this does not seem to be a problem here.
#2: by definition, skyscrapers are 50 or more floors, so two above don’t qualify. China has almost four times as many skyscrapers as the USA,
| Rank | Country | Number of skyscrapers | Tallest city | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 200 m+ | 300 m+ | |||
| 1 |  China |
3,496 | 1,307 | 128 | Hong Kong |
| 2 |  United States |
928 | 251 | 34 | New York City |
By city, Hong Kong comes in at #1, Shenzhen #2 and New York is #3,
| Rank | City | Country | Image | No. of skyscrapers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hong Kong |  Hong Kong |
 |
569 |
| 2 | Shenzhen | China |
 |
459 |
| 3 | New York City | United States |
.jpg) |
323 |
Shenzhen is building much faster than Hong Kong, so should be the world’s Number One by 2030.
Videos
HIgh-speed infrastructure
It is hard to describe how fast the Chinese can build or repair an infrastructure project. In China, this kind of work is measured in days and weeks. Judeo-Westerners take months and years. The Chinese have set one world record after another, finishing skyscrapers, bridges, ports, rail lines and roads with blinding speed. The Chinese understand the maxim, “Time is money”.
Even mundane tasks like an electric meter needing repair or replacement takes minutes, not hours (https://radiosinoland.com/2022/11/27/personal-stories-of-being-a-china-state-grid-customer-the-worlds-biggest-electric-utility-china-rising-radio-sinoland-221127/).
When I was living in Beijing in the 1990s, after returning from a long business trip, say six-eight weeks, we’d see a building on a familiar street and ask ourselves, “Was this building here when we left”? It is that dizzying.
Videos
Transcript
#3: One of the aspects of China’s economy is people cannot believe how fast the Chinese work.
The day before yesterday, I came here and there was nothing. And now they are already working hard. And I will show you another clip further down, where they’re doing even more substantial work.
They had projects in Cherbourg, in France where we lived, and it took 3, 4, 5 years for them to finish the project. In China, it would’ve taken three months. Projects like this in China are counted in days and weeks, not in months and years.
And that’s why the economy is so robust and so dynamic is because they move fast and they get their job done.
One of the reasons that they do this is because they do not want to interfere with the commerce of all these hundreds of shops that you see here, these are all mom and pop shops. These are all, these are all just, you know… there’s a guy doing haircuts for 25 yuan (€3).
So, they do not want to interrupt… In fact, there’s even more of the project down there that you can see all along this street. This’ll be done in a couple of three days, so that these restaurants and, and all these little mom
and pop shops are not affected.
This is really cute here. (while walking past a policeman on the beat).
If you lose, you will be hospitalized. If you win, you will go to jail.
Ah, China. And then of course you see there’s cranes everywhere. You see the cranes up there. There’s skyscrapers being built everywhere. China’s economy is dynamic, robust, fast moving for the people, for the 99%.
There’s a delivery guy. We did a post with a photo, like that guy there (https://radiosinoland.com/2025/11/08/evelynejeffs-excellent-china-adventures-1-months-already-traveling-here-our-first-official-post-just-arrived-to-shenzhen-20-photos-in-10-vignettes-of-daily-life-on-the-streets-to-start-your-ch/). He’s with Meituan, which is one of the biggest food deliverers in China.
Transcript
#4: And as you can see there are cranes all over the place. And also in Taiwan Province there are also quite a few cranes, because Taiwan is China and they’re developing their economy, just like the Mainland.
And then, just to show you, the day before yesterday, I came down this street to put a glass cover on my phone screen. And this wasn’t here two days ago. This was not here two days ago. And they will have this thing done in days, depending on how serious it is or what it is they’re trying to do, maybe maybe a week or two.
But again, they work fast and hard, because they do not want to hurt all these all these little shops here that are all privately owned by independent business people. Thus, they take very seriously trying to do the least amount of harm to businesspeople.
(Oh, look at those beautiful fish!)
They take seriously trying not to harm these small businesses (as little as possible).
Whereas in Cherbourg, France (where we lived before moving to China), many businesses went out, closed their shops down, independent businesspeople closed. Many of them closed down because construction
went on for years and years and it just killed the traffic. Cars couldn’t come through, buses couldn’t come through. And many of them went out of business.
It’s a big difference. This is China.
Transcript
#5: I am not sure what they’re doing here, but the fact that this is being done right between two apartment complexes that are going up, there’s this one here, there’s actually four because there’s one back over there where the crane is.
There’s four apartment complexes including this fourth one here. And the fact that this construction is going on between all of these buildings being built, suggest that they’re putting in maybe water, electricity, gas, sewage, et cetera.
Showcase, high-speed projects in China
There are thousands of these, but bere are a few for your viewing pleasure,
#6: One Century Tower: Hangzhou’s 280m Curved Skyscraper Time-lapse
#7: 10-storey residential building in China constructed in a day.
#8: time-lapse video shows completion of mega bridge on China’s railway.
#9: Chinese #PLA troops built a pontoon bridge to move tanks across a river during a drill.
#10: Beijing’s Sanyuan Bridge to Be Retrofitted within 43 Hours
#11: Chinese build 57-storey skyscraper in 19 days – time-lapse
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Other series by boots-on-the-ground China Writer travelers reporting on real China and real Chinese people!
Stay caught up with Amir&Jeff’s Amazing Adventure, journeying through the wilds of inner China, where foreigners don’t go! Short videos, captioned photos, articles, critical commentary.
State of the Chinese Union 2025: based on five months recently journeying across the country’s backwoods + 17 years living there. Speech given to Samui Real, Thailand, 13 August 2025
ADVENTURES IN ASIA WITH LADYB, FASHU, LAOLAO AND GONGGONG Series (focused on Taiwan Province and the rest of Asia)
Jeff’s many articles about Taiwan Province
Evelyne&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. Months spent traveling the back roads of China. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and critical commentary. The REAL Chinese people you do not know!
Frans Vandenbosch: Final reflections on an extraordinary voyage
https://yellowlion.org/asia-trip-2025-part-11/
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