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!
Introduction
It is important to realize that what is happening in Shenzhen is happening all over China, even in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th-tier cities. Shenzhen is not the exception, it’s the mundane Sino-normal. More on these smaller bergs in many future posts.
Photos
Where is Shenzhen?
#1a: surprisingly, a lot of people don’t know where Shenzhen is, even foreigners living in China. It is just north of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, there are three main zones from south to north: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories, the latter which butts up against Shenzhen (population 17+ million), and which you can see in this map. There’s a little river that runs between Shenzhen and Hong Kong (7.5 million). There are a couple of crossings where you can literally walk across a bridge to each city, without having to take the train, bus, metro, taxi, etc.
You can see Shenzhen is very oblong and horizontal. It’s about 50 kilometers from east to west. North of it is Dongguan (population 7.5 million), a global manufacturing hub and north of that is Guangdong (20+ million), the provincial capital of Guangdong. All four of these cities hug the east bank of the mighty Pearl River Delta. The solid orange patch right above Hong Kong is where I lived for three years.
Other than the artificial geopolitical boundary between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, these four metropolises are a seamless mega-city, all connected by roads, buses, metros, trains and high-speed trains.
Pearl River Delta Megacity
#1b: here are a couple of articles that explain why the Pearl River Delta is on of the most dynamic economic and manufacturing hubs on Earth,
Evelyne&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventures #4. Huge Pearl River Delta’s 85M people are connected by bridges, ferries and more. Join us for a ride! Critical commentary, 12 photos, 4 videos and 3 maps all fully explained.
https://radiosinoland.com/2025/11/25/evelynejeffs-excellent-china-adventures-4-huge-pearl-river-deltas-85m-people-are-connected-by-bridges-ferries-and-more-join-us-for-a-ride-critical-commentary-12-photos-4-videos-and-3-maps/
Shenzhen in the 1980s
#2a and 2b: I first visited Shenzhen in about 1992, when we lived in China for the round one, from 1990 to 1997, then visited between 2010 and 2015, and then lived there from 2016 to 2019. Back in the early nineteen nineties, it had already changed quite a bit, having developed much more than what you’re seeing in these nineteen-eighties photos. I have some wild, crazy stories about what it was like, which I wrote about in The China Trilogy. Back then, it was definitely the Wild East Buckaroo Days!
Thank God it’s changed much, much, much for the better. These two photos show you how Shenzhen truly was just a sleepy fishing and sea salt drying town of about twenty thousand people before 1980. In the top photo, you can see there they were already starting to build some of the buildings higher than one floor or two floors. Of course now, Shenzhen is rapidly overtaking Hong Kong as having more skyscrapers than any other city in the world.
Truly, truly unbelievable and only possible because China is communist-socialist, DAMMIT!
Shenzhen from atop skyscrapers
#3: if this photo of Shenzhen intrigues you, take a look at the short article below.
However, since 2019, this company, Big Pixel, in Shanghai has apparently stopped desktop presentations and 100+ cities can now be seen on your telephone, via WeChat and Facebook. Log-in here,
https://www.bigpixel.cn/gigapixelAPP/web/index.html
Compare Shenzhen to Shanghai
Same situation as Shenzhen. Click on the orange link above.
60 Seconds over Sinoland: quantum satellite camera used to do moveable, panoramic photo of Shanghai.
#4: they used the same quantum satellite camera atop a skyscraper in Shanghai. Equally breathtaking.
Two short slide shows of Shenzhen
Photos from the top of Diwang Tower
#5: Keep reminding yourself that none of this existed less than two generations ago. Look how incredibly built up it is everywhere. Keep trying to delude yourself that communism-socialism is a failure. If China were Judeo-capitalist, Shenzhen and all the other cities would be even bigger Kinshasa’s, Jakarta’s, Mumbai’s and Quito’s, full of crime, vice, violence, homelessness, poverty, slums, filth, pollution and shitty infrastructure. Yet, none that exists in China’s urban areas, even as they continue to grow.
Incidentally, all that green area in the distance is Hong Kong. Kilometers of undeveloped land, because the 10 trillionaire families who literally own the city lock, stock and barrel refuse to build subsidized, low-cost housing for the 50% of the people who can’t afford to buy a place to live and instead, pay these crooks rent every month. That’s Talmudic capitalism for you.
Given the opportunity, communist-socialist Baba Beijing would have already built millions of affordable apartments for Hong Kongers to live in dignity, with all the infrastructure that goes with them. Looks like they’ll have to wait until 2047, when their city is fully reintegrated into the Motherland.
A few more…
#6: a few more photos of Shenzhen at lower altitude. The long roof that looks like a manta ray is City Hall. It represents a Tang Dynasty (600-900AD) Mandarin’s hat.
This is one of my favorite museum exhibitions anywhere, because it tells a great story. …
#7a-7b: there is a Shenzhen History Museum atop the Diwang Tower, on the 69th floor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shun_Hing_Square). It’s called the Meridian View Center. All the photos below in the first slide show were taken by me from there. It’s a private museum, so you have to pay to get in. It costs about $10. I
As you walk in, you have this wonderful life-sized diorama of wax statues, with Deng Xiaoping and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during their negotiations to sign the 1997 handover treaty. In background is the symbolic merging of the two territories. On Deng’s side is Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and on Thatcher’s is Hong Kong Island’s skyline. Mao Zedong’s portrait is watching every move.
It says a lot, because as I have written, back in the nineteen nineties when we were living in China from 1990 to 1997, Hongkongers were sick and tired of the Brits. They were sick and tired of being a colony and there were a lot of protests. There were riots. There was violence. They wanted the British out, after having been oppressed and abused since 1839, treating the locals like shit, for a hundred and sixty years. I wrote a great chapter about all this in The China Trilogy.
This diorama is so revealing, because everybody thought that Deng Xiaoping was the one who was desperate to sign something. Yet, he had all the time in the world. He wanted to wait 50 years for the handover, until 2047. He was willing to give Hong Kong fifty more years of its current system. It was Margaret Thatcher who was trying to dump Hong Kong as quickly as she could. She wanted a rapid handover, but Deng Xiaoping won the day.
Thus, Hong Kong and China are One Country-Two Systems (like Taiwan and Macau) until 2047.
In the 1997 treaty, Hongkongers were expected to pass a national security bill that would align with Mainland China, meaning getting rid of Judeo-Mossad-CIA-MI6-Soros color revolutionaries. Baba Beijing finally lost patience in 2020, as Hong Kong was being devastated with Talmudic treason and subterfuge. Violent riots and massive vandalism were tearing the city apart, by you-know-who. The Mainland’s State Council said, okay. We’ve waited long enough and you’re going to get your security law written by us, which the treaty allows for.
They had no choice. Before 2020, the judges were all corrupted by the Judeo-West. The legislators were all being bought off by Judeo-Mossad-CIA-MI6-Soros. Since 2020’s HK National Security Law aligned with the Mainland, they’ve arrested scores of Judeo-Mossad-CIA-MI6-Soros subversives – traitors all, to their country and to their people. A number of them are already in jail. Thank goodness. Many more have fled to Western countries. There, they get six-figure salaries at Ivy League schools and cushy chairs in foaming-at-the-mouth anti-communist-socialist think tanks, doing everything they can to destroy the Chinese people’s way of life.
Now, Hongkongers are living in peace again. I just love it. I think it’s great.
This is why this diorama is such an incredibly fascinating slice of modern Chinese history.
Hong Kong versus Shenzhen. Don’t get me started!
In many Chinese cities, space is set aside for youth to create beautiful graffiti parks
#8: this article below is a lot of fun. With many photos.
Music is a common theme and expression in Chinese parks…
#9: how many of you know famous classical Chinese musicians and composers? The Chinese people are very cosmopolitan, indeed. Great article with photos below.
60 Seconds over Sinoland: Shenzhen’s new music-themed Baishilong (White Rock Dragon) Public Park
Architects from around the world flock to China, because the Chinese are not afraid to build edgy, original, avant-garde buildings, monuments and parks – in the thousands
#10: two articles discuss Shenzhen’s Shekou Ferry Port, in part, designed to look like a giant manta ray leaping into the sea.
How can Western capitalism beat THIS? That’s the rub, it can’t. China Rising Radio Sinoland 20171022
Avant-garde architecture is everywhere you turn in China, even in lower-tier cities
#11: just a couple of examples to give you a taste. Above is outside Guangzhou and represents ancient Chinese coins made out of copper. A string was threaded through the center hole to wear them around the waist or over the shoulder.
#12: this wild concept office building in Beijing is Phoenix International Center. The Judeo-West quit designing like this back in the 1980s, when Talmudic, neo-liberal bean counters started Weimarizing the halls of government and business. As a result, today’s occupied and colonized Western citizens are being driven into the dirt.
Amazing concept designs are being planned across China. Many of them with be realized.
#13: this is giant Net City, in the planning stages by Tencent, one of the world’s ten biggest corporations, famous for WeChat, video games, and headquartered in Shenzhen. It will be a car-free neighborhood covering two-million square meters (https://www.nbbj.com/work/tencent-shenzhen-headquarters-project-net-city). With Tencent’s deep pockets, Net City will likely get the go-ahead, if they can find the land in Shenzhen. Net City is as big as Monaco or Midtown Manhattan!
#14: this skyscraper is dubbed the “Double-C Tower”. Construction started in 2020 in Shenzhen and is expected to be open in 2027 (https://parametric-architecture.com/zaha-hadid-architects-shenzhen-tower-c/). Meanwhile, the Talmudic West is destroying itself bombing and genociding peoples all over the world. You have to choose between forever wars and development for the 99%. The Chinese Nation has made its choice.
Further into the future… the Chinese people are dreaming the impossible…
#15: architects around the world are presenting unimaginable concept designs to build in China. Above is a futuristic mega-skyscraper for Shenzhen. Knowing the communist-socialist Chinese well, it will probably come to fruition!
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