12 Photos From a Quick Trip to Shenzhen

My recent visit to Shenzhen lasted less than 48 hours before I bordered a high-speed train. Below are 12 photos shared in the spirit of "some of what caught my attention and interested me in addition to monsters and huge mobile phone markets during a brief period of time in Shenzhen". In one manner or another, each photo captures a part of Shenzhen's culture and environment. But there is certainly much, much (much) more to this rapidly changing city which fascinates me every time I visit. And even as I look at the photos now, they continue to inspire new questions.

So here is traffic on a road:

Traffic in an alley:

Traffic on a pedestrian street:

Signs for sale:

A sign on clothing:

A sign on a young woman's arm:

A sign for vocational training:

A sign for a skin whitening creme:

A message on the front:

A message on the back:

A promotion for mobile phones:

And last but not least, a promotion for McDonald's french fries:

Any questions now?

More from other lands soon . . .

Genuine, Fake, and In-between: A Visit to Electronics Markets at Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei

Several days ago I spent part of one afternoon in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei (also known as Huaqiang North) commercial area. According to ShenzhenShopper:

Theres over 20 shopping malls located in the Huaqiangbei area which provides about 70 million square meters of business area. Annual sales reaching over 20 billion, and there’s something like 130,000 people employed in the area. Yep, it’s large.

Huaqiangbei is most known for being one of the biggest electronics markets in the world. For many first time visitors, especially those already familiar with typical consumer electronics chain stores in China, I would agree with the suggestion on PIXEL to:

Skip [the consumer electronics shops] and spend your time in the buildings dedicated to Android tablets, “Shanzhai” phones (copies), phone accessories, components, LEDs, various gadgets, etc.

Just one of the shopping centers on its own can be overwhelming to those not accustomed with their scale, density, and intensity. Charles Arthur shared a gallery of photos on The Guardian. As prelude to another gallery of photos on Tech in Asia, Paul Bischoff wrote:

Within lies stall after stall after stall of nearly every gadget, component, and tool imaginable. Over half a dozen city blocks are filled to the brim with crowded marketplaces, each ranging from four to 10 floors high. Photos hardly do it justice. The place is immense.

For a variety of reasons, I kept my photo-taking activities to a minimum this time. The photo above is of an alley on the outskirts of Huaqiangbei. On both sides are huge electronics markets which aren't labeled even on Seeed Studio's detailed Shenzhen Map for Makers (free PDF download). The several markets I visited on this block mostly focused on mobile phone products — from components to complete phones to accessories. Here is just a small taste of what I saw in these markets where the line between genuine and fake can be blurry:

• Thousands of mobile phones with cracked screens, some showing clear signs they were from the U.S.
• Screens for various brand name phones for sale.
• Workers fixing and cleaning phones.
• Workers affixing brand name labels to unmarked batteries.
• Workers packaging iPhones to appear as new.
• Foreigners making purchases, reminding me of what I learned at a fake stuffed toy wholesale store in Guangzhou.

There is much more to say about Huaqiangbei, but I will leave it this for now. It can be a fascinating place to visit, even if you don't need to change an iPhone 5c into an iPhone 5s.

A Monster in Shenzhen

Part of a promotion at the COCO Park shopping center in Futian District, Shenzhen

Time to Go in Hong Kong

I have seen many "stop" signs in the world. The other day in Hong Kong, I was reminded I have seen far fewer "go" signs.

According to Hong Kong's Transport Department the green sign in the above photo is a "manually operated temporary 'go' sign". Since nobody was operating it at the time and it was standing upright near a "stop" sign facing a similar direction, I could understand if passing drivers experienced some confusion.

As for myself, after pondering the scene, I decided to just follow the sign's advice.

A Feline Minibus in Hong Kong

It isn't a Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro but instead a minibus in Hong Kong with a veterinarian ad:

Trams in Hong Kong aren't the only form of transportation offering a platform for creative advertising.

Chairman Mao Wants More Change

A Hong Kong bookstore sells the perfect item for anyone who believes that no matter how much money they save, they will always need Mao.

Little By Little: More Expression at a Hong Kong Pier

Where there was a temporary Tiananmen memorial in Hong Kong earlier this week, today the pedestrian area was back to its usual state.

Nearby, also as usual, several musical groups were performing — including Poco A Poco.

Next to their sign was a QR code to the Poco A Poco Facebook page which expresses:

Positive Message x Hong Kong!
Spread Love
Spread Smile
Spread Happiness

Although their goals differ from those who built the memorial, Poco A Poco's use of Facebook, popular in Hong Kong but blocked in mainland China, is also a sign of how there is less censorship and more free expression in Hong Kong than almost everywhere else in China.

A Temporary Tiananmen Memorial in Hong Kong

Hong Kong's Kowloon Public Pier offers a stunning view of Hong Kong Island and is a popular destination for tourists, including many from mainland China. When I walked by this past Sunday afternoon on a traditional Chinese holiday, Qingming (Ching Ming) Festival, otherwise known in English as Tomb-Sweeping Day, I saw displays about the violent crackdown which occurred around Beijing's Tiananmen Square nearly 26 years ago. There was also a monument for those who died and posters advertising the yearly June 4 Tiananmen candlelight vigil held in Hong Kong. It was organized by The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. Their website at www.alliance.org.hk does not appear to be accessible at the moment, but a Wikipedia entry describes their goals as:

. . . supporting patriotic democratic movements in China, putting an end to the current one-party dictatorship established by the Communist Party of China, and building a democratic China. It has become the largest grassroots pro-democracy advocacy group in Hong Kong, comprising over 200 base-level members from labour, councillor offices, religious, students, women and political commentary interest groups.

While I was at the pier, the displays caught the eyes of numerous passersby, some possibly from mainland China where such information is heavily censored. Here is a bit of what could be seen:

Sneaking a Peak at The New York Times in China

The above sign currently appears near a newsstand at the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry Pier in Hong Kong. It caught my eye since since The New York Times is not easy to read in mainland China, especially since it is blocked online.

Despite the challenges, here is one way the Times has tried to reach people in China as described by Heather Timmons:

Every time a new article appears on the Times’s Chinese language website, three or four copies of it appear on “mirror” sites scattered around the internet. While these mirrors, like this one of the company’s home page, are often quickly made inaccessible by censors, new ones crop up constantly, often made or sanctioned by the Times. The recent hacking attack on GitHub targeted a “mirror” of the New York Times’s Chinese-language site was not set up by the Times itself, but the strategy is the same—create a webpage that points readers in China to New York Times’ Chinese language content, and circumvents censors.

For more about the situation and other methods used by the Times, read the full article by Heather Timmons on Quartz.

Hanging Around at a Hong Kong Mall

An unusual sight now confronts people at the Miramar Shopping Centre in Hong Kong.

What do you see? At first, I thought it sort of looked like a squid or an octopus but the appendages weren't quite right. A more complete examination after stepping back provided the answer. It was of course a giant upside down rabbit.

Added note: More about MiRabbit, the "bubbly extra-terrestrial Easter bunny", and the "limited edition MiRabbit Mania selfie stick" can be found on the the mall's website here.

A Day of Good Air

Today as I left Zhongshan, the air was "good" by U.S. standards for the first time during my month-plus stay there. For what it's worth, Zhongshan's air is much better on average than many other cities in China.

Later in the day after a 3 hour trip which included my bag coming into contact with somebody else's inadvertently-dispersed liquid that smelled like fermented rotten prune juice, I was able to enjoy a blue sky with clouds elsewhere.

And as best I can tell, the air was "good" or close to it — not bad for Jordan Road in Hong Kong.

More on the GitHub Attack, a Breach of Trust, and Feminist Activists Detained: Assorted Links

Once again, here are some excerpts from pieces worth checking out, this time a mix of tech and non-tech:

1. Robert Graham further narrows the source of China's attack on GitHub:

Using my custom http-traceroute, I've proven that the man-in-the-middle machine attacking GitHub is located on or near the Great Firewall of China. While many explanations are possible, such as hackers breaking into these machines, the overwhelmingly most likely suspect for the source of the GitHub attacks is the Chinese government.

2. Dan Goodin explains a move by Google and Mozilla which will not thrill the Chinese government:

Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox browsers will stop trusting all new digital certificates issued by the China Internet Network Information Center following a major trust breach last week that led to the issuance of unauthorized credentials for Gmail and several other Google domains.

The move could have major consequences for huge numbers of Internet users as Chrome and Firefox, the world's second and third most widely used browsers respectively, stop recognizing all or many website certificates issued by CNNIC. That could leave huge numbers of users suddenly unable to connect to banks and e-commerce sites.

3. In "Dark Days for Women in China?" ChinaFile hosted a conversation including 14 people about the recent criminal detention of five feminist activists. Here is a portion of Leta Hong Fisher's response:

The last time I met with Li Maizi (as Li Tingting likes to be called) at a small dumpling restaurant in Beijing, I asked if she was optimistic about the future of women’s rights in China. “I am an idealist, but I am not in a hurry to see real change,” she said. “It will require a long, drawn-out period of struggle to see any progress, especially when it comes to gender issues.” These are not the words of a dissident trying to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power. Rather, Li and the other young activists she worked with went out of their way to avoid “politically sensitive” issues and chose causes that would resonate with the mainstream Chinese population. Take the “Occupy Men’s Toilets” campaign they organized in 2012, which called for more public toilets for women. “This issue isn’t that politically serious,” admitted Li, “but it’s a problem every woman has to deal with every day, so many women and men were able to see the inequality and to support the cause.” Little did I imagine that a year and a half later, Li Maizi and four other fun-loving feminists would wind up criminally detained, facing a possible jail term for planning to distribute stickers about sexual harassment on public transportation.

The fact that these young women—detained in three different cities on the eve of International Women’s Day—have still not been released suggests a disturbing escalation of Chinese government paranoia about public demonstrations and a chilling environment for Non-Governmental Organizations and non-profit groups.