Rush Hour in Shenzhen

Being an Eastern Sierra kid at heart, cities fascinate me, and here I am in Shenzhen!! It began when I went to college in LA. Continued in grad school in Chicago. Then eight years leading a public affairs training organization in San Francisco. I’ve studied these three cities in depth. How in the world can they exist? How do they organize themselves? How are decisions made? How are they the same? How are they different? Why are they so magnetic?

But Shenzhen—this is a new experience. It's a half-hour north of Hong Kong in Mainland China! Five of us were riding in a van heading to W.L.Gore & Associates from Hong Kong early in the morning. Two were going to be in the Team Performance training I would lead with my colleague Ed Claassen the following two days. The two others were managers who lived in Hong Kong and were visiting the factory in Shenzhen for some meetings. Gore began with complex polymers and Goretex, but has spread into medical equipment that use the same compounds, for stints and the like. This is now their largest business segment. I'd have several days to get to know Gore. Today I was focusing on China and Shenzhen and getting oriented to this vast land.

  “Shenzhen’s probably got more than 10 million in population, if you count the related outlying areas” Doug said in the van ride up. Officially it’s around 4.5 million. It’s the first city on the mainland after passing through the new territories in the Hong Kong Territory north of Kowloon. Hong Kong, the neon city, is of course a study in density, much of it new, but the landscape thins out into hills and farms in the new territories to the north. Even so the air was opaque. “Is this a bad, average or good air day?” I asked Norman, our driver. “Average,” he said. “Good days here compare to the worst days in LA” one of the Gore people added. It stayed smoggy the whole way.

The new territories are on a complex peninsula with many bays that ends up in the south at Kowloon, just north of Hong Kong island, as the previous map shows if you study it. In the north a river separates the rice patties from the towers of Shenzhen, tall and white all along the river, with several shiny new silver ones rising high above the rest. One of these is the Four Points Sheraton where I’ll be staying. It was the first thing I saw coming in (see picture). The buildings to its right at the border (out of the picture) were 1970s-80s it looked like – white, balcony crusted apartment high rises—20 stories maybe. I know from my Chicago architecture tour this summer that the sheer, curtain wall buildings that hang the glass on the outside are a signature of buildings built in the 2000s. These white towers were all stucco opening windows. 

 A melon slice of land along the river is the Futian Industrial Park, a Free Trade Zone. The Gore folks explained the process of getting in as we waited at a special customers station. “Companies that qualify to be in the Free Trade Zone and produce are given the right to go through this customs set up just for them. Even so you don’t know what will happen one day to the next. The regular customs are long, long lines of people. They make you walk. You’re in with people carrying 75 pound bags of DVDs and who knows what else. They’ll search you and pass the others by,” they said. I got the picture, mentally that is. I was advised NOT to take pictures at customs.

Here the driver had to go in with all our passports while we waited. Ten minutes later he came out with an official woman who then visually checked all of us against the passports. This cleared we backed out into a tool booth kind of pass through where no less that four other officials came out and surrounded the car, peering in and looking at the bags. They clearly knew the driver. They asked to look inside Henry’s bag for some reason. He’s Chinese and from Singapore. I was nervous because we had not been able to get our training supplies through Hong Kong customs by mail because we hadn’t detailed every single item in our paperwork—so I was hand carrying a suitcase of Team Performance Leader Guides and a long box with blank paper and charts. The customs folks didn’t blink at this, though we were carrying them between our legs and between us – packed as we were in the van. “Why did they search you?” I asked Henry. No-one had any idea. “It’s just random,” one fellow said.

“This was a good day,” Doug said as we left. We passed by mounds of bricks and a half built set of “new” customs booths. “I think they are taking design lessons from the Gaza strip here,” he quipped with dark Scottish humor. It did look pretty disheveled. “It’s been this way for months,” someone else said. “Perhaps with the downturn they just stopped building on it. It can be new for long time!”

It was minutes before we were driving through the electric retracting gates at the Gore offices and into the round about. We’d been passing six packs of large office buildings for five minutes. Sony. Siemens. Phillips. Gore and Chinese names we couldn’t read. Now a gray-blue skyscraper, 10-12 stories high, rose up before us. “Headquarters is on floor 7. We have taken over four floors of another building as our factory,” one of the Gore folks said. There were three or four Chinese companies sharing the same lobby.

I spent the day e-mailing and working back at the hotel but went back to Gore to set up the room with Ed around 5:00. After we were done we decided to walk back to the Four Points instead of having a driver. I’d studied the Google maps enough and paid attention on the two trips over that I was confident I knew where it was. Besides, the Four Points towers, going up some 35 floors, were much taller than their surrounding buildings. I knew the river to the south would be a guide since the Hotel was almost on its banks.

It was dusk as we headed out. Dozens of young, lively Chinese men and women were leaving at the same time. Many were on bicycles, or boarding big busses waiting in the roundabout. There were dozens of small motorbikes. It was cool but not cold, even thought it is technically winter. We headed north along a sidewalk posted with large palms. At the end of the street, towering like black extra-terrestrial skeletons were four enormous towers under construction. We turned East.

I had expected Shenzen to be industrial. My youngest son Phil is a product developer at Nike and comes here to check on manufacturers of their sunglasses. He said there wasn’t a lot to do. But I had a preconception of what “industrial” meant that wasn’t this. The buildings were more like those in Silicon Valley, except 10-12 stories instead of two. It’s a bit like north San Jose near Adobe but not nearly as clean. Clearly this free trade zone is pretty new… but it has a rough quality at the ground level that points to a recent rural past. The dusty sidewalks turned to large paving stones. The large palms and sycamores, tall office buildings and busy, nicely dressed workers reminded me of LA. They reminded Ed of Huston.

The sidewalks grew even more packed with young workers heading home, I assumed to the apartments towers we could see everywhere. The mood felt festive. Lots wore boots and sporty jackets, stylish haircuts, and bags. This was a happening place it seemed, but not about tourists. Is this the new China of rising wealth for the middle class?

I noticed that we were having to pay a lot of attention to walking. Here the pedestrian is NOT king. Cars and bicycles assume the right of way. The pedestrian moves. Lots of honking and beeping. People would smile sometimes, look at us puzzled, but no beggars. This place is a working person’s town.

Earlier we’d had a young woman come in at Gore to help us set the room. She was a contractor according to her badge. She didn’t speak any English, but worked with intense focus, and didn’t stop until the place was completely ready. When she finished one task she dove in on the next, coming right into help without being asked. I imagined this kind of drive widespread. I could almost feel it. I wondered how many workers are lined up to take the place of the ones who are able to work here. “What happens to the people when the companies downsize, as they are beginning to now?” I asked my van partners. “They go back home,” they responded.

We headed down toward the tall apartment towers and the hotel, comforted by seeing the same Four Points in neon at the tip top.

We came up to a big intersection that seemed to be a hub for buses and traffic. Long cues waited to board the buses – again mostly young tidily dressed workers. This was a subways in New York and Moscow crowd. These are the new urbanites.

We crossed over and down a street packed with open shops. Here was the living center of this place. Neon and colors and characters painted a texture of vitality as far as we could see. Music stores next to open restaurants next to fresh food markets with a smattering of vendors spreading wares out right on the sidewalks. It was dinnertime! I had to take some pictures.

It’s frustrating not knowing the language or being able to read the signs. Do I trust inferences from the city itself— the buildings, the materials, and the clothes? The shops and stores didn’t seem to be putting on airs – they felt practical and functional. I thought of the near north in Chicago. Except this city doesn’t stop two miles inland like Chicago. It goes on and on, and follows the estuary northwest until it merges with Guangzho, another megalopolis that is three times the size of Shenzen.

This is my first day here. Rush hour in Shenzhen. Deep in one of the arteries of the Guangdong Province, home of the industrial legs and thighs of China. What can one make of first impressions? My hope is to learn from some of these young people tomorrow and the next day what lies beneath the surface.