"Shenzhen’s rise from mud is impressive, but the city was not planned for human scale. It took 50 minutes by car to get anywhere. We were routinely befuddled by how to walk from the Luohu subway station to our hotel: they were purportedly across the street, but due to the multi-lane road separating the buildings, the hotel was only accessible by navigating a looping maze of under- and over-passes. (For some reason, Chinese really dislike walking—I was shocked by how often people would squeeze into jam-packed escalator lines rather than saunter down an empty flight of stairs.)
There are some strollable bits: skyscrapers and night markets here, an urban hike up to a Deng statue there. I did appreciate the famed electronics market Huaqiangbei, where you can purchase anything from off-brand iPhones to factory cables. (Pro tip: The real discounts are in the tiny stalls a few floors up, and you can always barter on bulk buys. “The ground floor is for chumps,” Afra told me.)
But the state’s shadow is never far. In the stairwells of Huaqiangbei, in malls and in industrial parks, you’d see riot gear—shields and batons—propped against walls, ready to stop a phantom protest at any moment. It’s unclear if these materials—identical in every location and every city we visited—were actually meant to be used (you’d think that theoretical rioters could grab them as easily as police). Instead, they served as an ever-visible reminder that you were never far from the full force of the state."
https://jasmi.news/p/china-2025
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