Report on reconnaisance mission to Shenzhen 26/12/05.
Right then.
Safe home again - I'm really glad I'm still flying under the radar of the authorities. S'funny really, they know enough about me and what I do, but they just didn't put 2 + 2 together when I applied for a multi-entry last year - went in with a batch at the same time as about 200 other "tourists".
Anyhow, Shenzhen is absolutely rocking peeps. Fifty years ago it was paddy fields, twenty five years ago a village. Ten years ago it was a train station, main street and hotel (well, a bit more,) and now it's a sprawling metropolis of ten million, mostly young, people. It rings with a youthful energy. A vibrancy. An urgency. There's a buzz in the air. A confidence.
This is a city on the move!
"The figure includes 310,000 aborignals, who lived in the place before the Shenzhen SEZ was built; 1.65 million registered permanent residence; 4.32 million permanent residents and more than 6 million immigrants who make their livings as temporary workers or babysitters in the city."
The City has increased it's population 32 times since it was designated China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) 25 years ago.
Hehehehehe! I smuggled-in two blow-up-balloon type thingy's, for my friends 5 year old daughter. I got from the last HK demo'. You blow them up and they are each about 3 feet long and 3 inches in diameter. Then you bang them together and they make a fuck off great rackett. Anyhoooo, they are bright yellow and have big fuck-off black characters on each that roughly translate as: "Everybody shout.....Power to the People!!"
That should stir up the local kindergarden tomorrow morning.
S'also funny reading some peeps on the boards. They tend to be older, either Brit or Septic and either Tory/GOP or, if to the left, seem stuck in some timewarp when thinking of China - Oh, and the hippies too for some reason. Anyway, they seem to think that China is still a place under the thumb of the Central Govt. That the CCP is a viable, central, united and uniting body, the fingers and eyes of which still intrude into every aspect of people's lives. A spy on every corner, just waiting for someone to whisper "Hu Jintao. Haaaah Toi!!", and whoosh, it's off to the Laogai.
Silly Billy's that they are.
It's not like that.
Shenzhen was established as the first SEZ with the sole purpose of mirroring Hong Kong. To try and imitate the golden-egg-laying goose. When set up, the SEZ was shut off from the rest of the country and opened up to HK. Just in case the experiment failed, Deng wanted to ensure that the rest of the Motherland wouldn't be "infected" by the capitalist disease that was HK. But boy oh boy did he want to know how to create a golden-egg-laying goose.
Well, the rest, as they say, is history. China is infected big time. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. (Mainland) Chinese peeps still flock to Shenzhen in their hundreds of thousands each year. We honkies use it as a cheap place to play and party and invest for the future (it takes me a bit more than a half hour to get to Shenzhen, but an hour to hail to Wanchai - though I must say, I luuuuuuurve Wanchai). Even HK cab drivers have a wife (and two apartments) in the city. The number of HK men taking FIRST wives in Shenzhen has just overtaken the number with SECOND wives there.
The building continues madly, upwards and outwards, tower blocks and tower blocks, off into the distance. And then suddenly your in a wee sidestreet, dark and unpaved, three storey terraced village houses on either side, prostitutes - young, middle and aged, hawkers hawking their wares, dirty children and old men beggars (holding dirty children), a small industry in every doorway, and trading, trading, trading, trading, all over the street - anything and everything you could ever want, or imagine, from across China, and some stuff from waaaaaaaay beyond the imagination, and all at half the price, then half again, then subtract yer grannies age then half it again...... and then......DONE!!!
Then out the other end of the alley and suddenly...BANG...Bright lights, big city again.
The contrast is utterley sublime....Exquisite!
Shenzhen is now HK's rumbunctious, big brother - HK being the refined, smaller sister. HK is ordered, orderly and demure. Shenzhen is in your face, disorderly and totally out of order!
To say: "The Wild East." really just doesn't quite do it justice. The personal freedoms are astonishing. Everybody just doing their own thing. The kids are stylish in twenty different ways from grunge to punk to whichever. The rules are.......well, the RULE is......Don't get caught! And even if you do get caught, there's usually a way out for a few dollars more. Let's trade! What've you got? Heads down, work hard. There's money to be made, families to be fed and a future to be had.
I fookin' luv it!
An' fook the CCP too!
Rock on China!
Blessings all.
Woof
> I can only go on my own past experience, as you can tell I'm no politics boffin I think that workers are a bit better protected than in China. Here the labour laws are better enforced. In China they are pretty much ornamental - any ethical standards you have to set yourself. I was party to a conversation - I was with someone who wanted to place a really big order with a factory but they said they couldn't make it in time, they didn't have space. The customer said, 'Can't you get them to do overtime? He refused, he said he was only allowed to add two hours a week or he'd be fined. I've noticed this kind of thing in several different places I've worked all over Vietnam. This doesn't happen in China.
