Well, Shenzhen as a city, doesn’t really have any history….
In 1979 / 1980 Shenzhen was really a fishing town on the Pearl River Delta with a population of approx. 200,000 people. Then the Chinese authorities declared it the first of a number of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) and it began to grow. Being the closest large population in mainland china to Hong Kong (approx. 40 kilometers), the Chinese authorities began an experiment which can be simply put as can western capitalism be successful in China under the control / direction of the state.
Simple answer is YES.
Today, 30 years on, it is a huge city of between 14 and 18 million people (14 million official but more like 18 million with all the unregistered people living here). Massive Chinese and oversea’s investment has let to a massive, vibrant and successful city.
Whilst having many millions of inhabitants, the city does not cover that much land mass due to the extreme use of high rise office and accommodation space.
Shenzhen Overview Map – All Areas
The city is very long east to west and relatively narrow north to south due the “hills” shown in the map above in green slowing the northern development. However, there has been a lot of development north of the hills in recent years so Shenzhen is still expanding to the north and west to cope with growing demand for housing, offices, manufacturing and more recently R&D space and facilities.
Due the massive and rapid growth, the majority of the Chinese inhabitants are “migrant” works i.e. coming from other parts of china so even the Chinese have trouble understanding the accents of the other Chinese people so a westerner has really no hope.
Shenzhen, being in Guangdong province, officially speaks Cantonese as a language whilst the majority of China speaks the official Mandarin language so living in Shenzhen means you should learn Cantonese but that wont help you anywhere else in China and most of the Shenzhen inhabitants wont understand you anyway…… Damn…. Stick with English?
Categories: Shenzhen
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