Shenzhen - The Wild Wild West (深圳)
Posted On Thursday, November 8, 2007 at at 7:27 PM by Alvin
Shenzhen (深圳) had been the poor-cousin town of Hong Kong for almost the 2 past decades when during this time it transformed itself from a gold-rush frontier dusty old town to a modern economic power house in the south of China. The house prices in SZ are now growing faster than those in HK even.
The Hong Kong Shenzhen Western Corridor (HKSWC) - 西部通道 (深圳灣公路大橋) was opened on the 1st of July in 2007, take a look at the stylish bridge connecting HK and SZ at the western end of the New Territories. Yesterday it took us about 45 minutes to travel from the Goldcoast to this new boarder crossing by bus. SZ is now full of high rise buildings housing banks, high-tech companies and well-appointed residences. What's more, the city has a number of "book-malls" where one can spend the entire day wandering around shelves and shelves of newly published Chinese and English books. 
We went to Shenzhen Book City located right next to the Shao Nian Gong MTR (少年宫站) yesterday which is reputedly the second biggest book-mall in China (the largest is in Beijing) ! There were literally millions of books there and I even located a book titled "Indian Accounting Standards". When one is tired of reading and browsing, there are coffee shops and restaurants of fairly reasonable prices and standards within the book-mall. Yes, the ever-present KFC and Starbucks are there... We went to a local restaurant where we had vegetable dumplings and buns and endless cups of Chinese tea for RMB 22 ! Then we head for the Music section of the book-mall and found some of my favorite original music albums (which I still don't own) - Fleetwood Mac (Rumours) and The First Tracy Chapman albums selling for RMB 20 each. I now know where to buy my music CDs. A great day out.
We went to Shenzhen Book City located right next to the Shao Nian Gong MTR (少年宫站) yesterday which is reputedly the second biggest book-mall in China (the largest is in Beijing) ! There were literally millions of books there and I even located a book titled "Indian Accounting Standards". When one is tired of reading and browsing, there are coffee shops and restaurants of fairly reasonable prices and standards within the book-mall. Yes, the ever-present KFC and Starbucks are there... We went to a local restaurant where we had vegetable dumplings and buns and endless cups of Chinese tea for RMB 22 ! Then we head for the Music section of the book-mall and found some of my favorite original music albums (which I still don't own) - Fleetwood Mac (Rumours) and The First Tracy Chapman albums selling for RMB 20 each. I now know where to buy my music CDs. A great day out.
