Shenzhen Archives - TravelsFinders.Com ®

WESTERN SHENZHEN OVERSEAS CHINESE TOWN

editor — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 10:24:00 +0000

Entering Nanshan district along Shennan Ave. from the East, the first sub-district you come to is Overseas Chinese Town. Overseas Chinese town known universally as OCT is a district of leafy streets and tall well-clipped hedges hiding discreet, but extremely luxurious, housing developments. This is where the well-heeled Shenzhener lives. It is also the centre of tourism in Shenzhen. Overseas Chinese Town is home to Shenzhen’s four iconic theme parks: Windows of the World, Folk Customs Park, Splendid China and Happy Valley. Why Overseas Chinese Town? OCT is another of those areas of Shenzhen where, during the 1980s, tabula rasa

The post WESTERN SHENZHEN OVERSEAS CHINESE TOWN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

CHIWAN TIN HAU TEMPLE SHENZHEN

editor — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 15:03:00 +0000

Tian Hou or Queen of Heaven, better known by her Cantonese name Tin Hau, is a female Daoist deity worshipped by seafarers and their families all around the coast of southern China. She has various manifestations. On the Fujian coast and especially in Taiwan she is known as Ma Tsu and she fades imperceptibly into Amida Buddha or Guan Yin all around the area. It is probably no accident that southern Chinese Christians are devoted to the veneration of Mary in the form of Star of the Sea. Tin Hau temples aren’t usually very impressive, but this is the biggest

The post CHIWAN TIN HAU TEMPLE SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

CENTRAL SHENZHEN SHENNAN AVENUE

editor — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 06:27:00 +0000

The choice of Shennan Avenue as one of Shenzhen’s great sights was an inspired one. Shennan Avenue runs the length of the city for approximately 30 km starting at Wutong Mountain in the East and ending at Nanshan in the west. It is wide all the way, but at the beginning of the Futian CBD it widens even further to eight lanes plus two service roads and a wide flower-filled median strip. Crossing by pedestrian subway from one side to the other is a major exercise. For the whole of its route it is flanked by some of Shenzhen’s most

The post CENTRAL SHENZHEN SHENNAN AVENUE appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

THE THEME PARKS SHENZHEN

editor — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 03:00:00 +0000

In the early 1980s in China, theme parks were considered one of the marks of development. This was an unexpected consequence of China’s opening to the world in the 1970s. When Western diplomats and statesmen first started visiting China in large numbers they were subjected to relentless hospitality. And when, in the late 1970s, it came their turn to reciprocate, theme parks were high on the list of tourist spots to be visited. Chinese officials were deeply impressed by the Disneylands and Five Flags of the world and on their return spread the message that there was no development without

The post THE THEME PARKS SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

HUAQIANG BEI SHENZHEN

editor — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 06:30:00 +0000

Huaqiang Bei is the main road in the downtown city area and not for the faint-hearted. People flock here from the countryside and crowds, hustlers and stalls proliferate. Huaqiang Bei is THE shopping Mecca of Shenzheners. There are all manner of glitzy malls growing up like mushrooms throughout the city but the real Shenzhener has an abiding suspicion that these are only for the bourgeoisie, a suspicion that we to some extent share. You can look but you’d better not touch seems sometimes to be the applicable rule in some of the malls, and if you’re on a day trip

The post HUAQIANG BEI SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

OCT ART AND DESIGN GALLERY SHENZHEN

editor — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 07:54:00 +0000

This gallery was opened on September 1, 2008. It’s part of the He Xiangning Gallery stable of contemporary art galleries and it specialises in the avant-garde, specifically what its owners classify as Post Modernism. It’s housed in a handsome black three-storey box like building next to the He Xiangning Gallery. It reminds us a bit in terms of its proportions of the Beijing water cube except that instead of bubbles its facade has a trelliswork of black steel. And like its sister, the Shenzhen Contemporary Art Gallery, the facade is built over an industrial building, in this case a former

The post OCT ART AND DESIGN GALLERY SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHEKOU SEA WORLD SHENZHEN

editor — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Sunday lunch. It is 1:45P.M.. A bottle of fine Chilean red wine has disappeared effortlessly and the remains of a piece of steak and a particularly nutritious salad are sitting on our plate. A gentle breeze is blowing through the palms. We are at one with the world. In fact the only slightly jarring note is the gaucho-clad sombrero-wearing Chinese waitress but in our current state we are prepared to let that one slip through to the keeper. We are in a Brazilian barbecue in Shekou. A Brazilian barbecue in China? All the rage ever since the Brazilian airline Varig

The post SHEKOU SEA WORLD SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN UNIVERSITY

editor — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:24:00 +0000

There are lots of institutions of higher learning in Shenzhen but only one Shenzhen University. That’s quite strange for a city of the size of Shenzhen. But in its short history of twenty-five years Shenzhen University has built up a formidable intellectual reputation. The circumstances of its foundation in 1983 say a lot about the importance of Shenzhen to developing policy in China at that time and since. From the beginning Shenzhen University was closely associated with Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Shenzhen University’s first President, Zhang Wei, was, at the time of the foundation of Shenzhen University, first Vice-President of Tsinghua.

The post SHENZHEN UNIVERSITY appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN MTR MAP DOWNLOAD

editor — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 02:54:00 +0000

EATING IN SHENZHEN ORDERING A CHINESE MEAL Many people find ordering a Chinese meal something of an ordeal. Menus are enormous and names are often unfamiliar. This is compounded in Shenzhen by the fact that menus are usually only in Chinese. But this should not put you off. Most menus have pictures of the main dishes and, by following a few simple rules, you can quickly become an expert orderer. Rule 1: Chinese meals are eaten in common. You order a number of dishes that are placed together in the middle of the table. Don’t expect to order a dish

The post SHENZHEN MTR MAP DOWNLOAD appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

MTR MAP SHENZHEN CHINA

editor — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 23:33:00 +0000

People are sometimes a bit surprised to discover that although Shenzhen is firmly in Guangdong Province, Cantonese food is rather hard to come by. The fact is that just about everybody comes from somewhere else so ubiquity is not a characteristic of Cantonese food. There are exceptions. One of the nicest ones is in Bagua First Rd. This is one of the earliest eat streets in Shenzhen. It owes its origins to nostalgic Hong Kong businessmen who, in the early days of Reform and Opening, congregated in this area. In those days the area around Bagua Rd and Bao’an North

The post MTR MAP SHENZHEN CHINA appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SPLENDID CHINA

editor — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:48:00 +0000

The first of the OCT theme parks, Splendid China opened its doors in 1989 with the objective of showing all of China’s main tourist attractions in miniature. We first visited it shortly after it opened and were immediately entranced, not the least in those days because the miniature replicas were so much better than the real thing. The Cultural Revolution’s legacy was still with us in the form of neglected and destroyed cultural sites and we figured that this was the best way to get to know them. Then an interlude of a couple of decades intervened until recently we

The post SPLENDID CHINA appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN DONGGUAN MAP

editor — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 03:27:00 +0000

SHENZHEN HUBEI VILLAGE You’ll find this area in books referred to under various names including Fenghuang Rd, Phoenix Rd and Leyuan Rd but they’re so close to each other that we prefer the name of the original village on the site, Hubei village. Hubei Village is a Hakka village. It is one of the oldest villages in Shenzhen and other than Dong Men itself, the closest to the skyscrapers of the city centre. It was settled by the Zhang clan in the seventeenth century and still retains a lot more traditional residences than most Shenzhen urban villages, including the clan

The post SHENZHEN DONGGUAN MAP appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN BUS MAP IN ENGLISH

editor — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 07:54:00 +0000

Metro: Hua Qiao Cheng YANTIAN FOOD STREET There’s lots of seafood on offer at Shenzhen’s eat streets and some people think Yantian is the most important of them. It’s the classic Hong Kong formula. Ingredients: a fish market, cooks, chopsticks, tables and stools. Yantian has all of these plus an old village plus views of the sea and the container cranes. Not bad. It sounds lyrical but we don’t want to give you the wrong impression. This is industrial eating. The fish market isn’t the sort where you wander in and look at the quaint fisherfolk. It’s big and municipal

The post SHENZHEN BUS MAP IN ENGLISH appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN MAP METRO

editor — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 04:33:00 +0000

Chinese currency is used almost exclusively in Shenzhen. Many guidebooks will tell you that you can use Hong Kong Dollars in Shenzhen. Be wary of this advice, as it is now out of date. Twenty years ago it was true. It is still true in those places such as the Luohu Commercial City, which cater mainly to Hong Kong shoppers, although the rate of exchange offered may be unfavourable. Outside these areas it is far from true, and it is becoming increasingly less so as the Hong Kong Dollar depreciates against the Yuan. Now, most places will not accept Hong

The post SHENZHEN MAP METRO appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN METRO MAP CHINESE

editor — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 11:48:00 +0000

Che Gong Miao XINWEN STREET EAT STREET The food here’s particularly good but the food is only a secondary reason for going to Xinwen St. Xinwen means news and this eat street, situated right behind the Special Zone Press Tower, is where Shenzhen’s journalists go to eat and drink. There’s a special buzz as they huddle round tables discussing scandal in hushed tones occasionally looking over their shoulders to check that some rival who may scoop them isn’t overhearing. Sometimes you see a table of fashion journalists, notable for the elegance of the females and the gayness of the males.

The post SHENZHEN METRO MAP CHINESE appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

PORTOFINO SHENZHEN

editor — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 16:18:00 +0000

Yes, Portofino. We’re quite happy to put this on the list of musts, especially on a sunny autumn day. Upper end real estate development in China isn’t like elsewhere. The developer seems to conceive of his customer as being akin to the Las Vegas gambler. There’s no such thing as straight gambling in Vegas. You have to add in the fun and fantasy element. Equally there’s no such thing as a straight apartment building in Shenzhen. Every estate with even minor pretensions to class is surrounded by beautifully designed, realised and maintained gardens and recreation facilities. And nowhere is this

The post PORTOFINO SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN MAP CHINA

editor — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 03:24:00 +0000

Metro Ke Xue Guan Line 1 HUAQIANG BEI FOOD STREET SHENZHEN Huaqiang Bei is the epicentre of food in Shenzhen. Actually none of the restaurants are in Huaqiang Bei Rd itself. This is in response to the necessity to make every square inch of that hallowed street available to shout the virtues of mobile phones at maximum volume. To eat you go to the adjoining streets, Yannan, Huafa, Zhenxing, Zhenhua and Zhenzhong. And there are restaurants by the score. We’re a bit traditional when it comes to eat streets. We think that they’re for joyous but down market eating and

The post SHENZHEN MAP CHINA appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

CHINA MERCHANTS AND SHEKOU

editor — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 17:42:00 +0000

At the time of the foundation of the Special Economic Zone, several parts of Shenzhen were parcelled out to various organisations to administer as they wished. In the case of Shekou the organisation in question was China Merchants Group. Actually in some ways it’s more accurate to say that it was handed out to Yuan Geng who used China Merchants as his vehicle. First, China Merchants. China Merchants has a long history in China. During the 1890s, as the Qing dynasty teetered on the brink of collapse, a group of Chinese, some with foreign experience and connections, managed to convince

The post CHINA MERCHANTS AND SHEKOU appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SHENZHEN GUANGDONG CHINA MAP

editor — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 04:30:00 +0000

Kang Tai Wu Le Cheng bus stops CHE GONG MIAO EAT STREET This is a terrific little eat street right at the Che Gong Miao Metro station on the south side of Shennan Avenue near the Tian An Cyber City. You can get just about any kind of Chinese regional cooking that you can imagine. We note Northern, Jiangxi, Hunan, Zhejiang, just to name a few. We know of one restaurant specialising in Lanzhou noodles with a good working class clientele and terrifying noodles with copious amounts of raw garlic and lethal looking chilies floating in it. There are even

The post SHENZHEN GUANGDONG CHINA MAP appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.

SOUTH OF NAN’AO SHENZHEN

editor — Sat, 04 Mar 2017 19:06:00 +0000

South of Nan’ao there are several small bays and narrow sandy beaches. You can reach them by car along a winding mountain track, which to us, given the general level of driving skill and attention around the town, is a major disincentive. But when your heart rate drops to normal and your palms stop sweating, the results are worth it. Maybe one of the boats available for hire at Nan’ao would be a better option. Down towards to Moyu squid Point, the southernmost point of the Peninsula is Dalang Big Wave Bay one of the many bays of that name

The post SOUTH OF NAN’AO SHENZHEN appeared first on TravelsFinders.Com ®.