What's Up Al ? 遊記隨筆 生活點滴

Relaxing for a week or so in our neighbouring city of Shenzhen - first to spend some quality time to really get to know this city with an incredible upbringing and secondly to attend the many Lunar New Year of The Rat festivals taking place all over the city. Shenzhen had come a long long way from that farm land to the present day Silicon Valley of China, leading the pack in the Greater Bay Area with its high tech companies and the many incubating hopefuls of tomorrow's Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba etc. We based ourselves around the conveniently located Tao Yuan (桃園) Metro station in the Nan Shan (南山) District. We explored the Lian Hua Shan Garden Park (蓮花山公園) with its delightful lakes and manicured lawns; we also spent most of the day in Sea World where we were surprised to find many expats living their lives, riding mopeds, cycling in flippers and shorts in this balmy weather and taking their visiting parents to the local German bar and Turkish taverns ! 
The highlight of our trip was the Lantern Festival (彩燈會) at the Shenzhen Bay Park (深圳灣公園); we arrived at around 7 p.m. after a day's sight seeing and we took a well-deserved tea break at Chegongmiao Temple (車公廟) beforehand. The magical light shows and amazing wizardry the organisers arranged the colorful fixtures and tunnels full of brightly lit lanterns (electrical of course) were just mesmerising ! Over New Year's Eve and Day, we fenced ourselves in, in the comfortable apartment and watched oodles of newly released movies (The Joker, The Irishman etc.), sharing our sojourn was the delightful companion of a bottle of Ballantine's Scotch; ah, welcome to the Year Of The Rat, cheers ! But little did we know, the creeping anxiety of a new virus was slowly overshadowing our stay and we headed back home a few days earlier than expected, just to be on the safe side. Nevermind, we would be back in this comfortable, modern and functional city in no time !