Holiday in Shenzhen

About Shenzhen

Shenzhen is the most unlikely city in the world: 45 years ago a fishing village with 30,000 inhabitants, today a technology metropolis with over 17 million people, embodying China's fastest transformation. Located directly at the border with Hong Kong, Shenzhen is Asia's Silicon Valley — home to Huawei, Tencent, BYD, and DJI, and the city vibrates with a spirit of innovation, futuristic architecture, and an energy that can be felt. The cityscape is a feast for architecture enthusiasts: The skyline of Futian and Nanshan is among the most impressive in the world, crowned by the 600-meter-high Ping An Finance Centre, the fourth tallest building on Earth. The observation deck at 562 meters offers a view that stretches from the rooftops of Shenzhen over the Pearl River to Hong Kong on clear days. Alongside stand masterpieces of contemporary architecture: the MOCAPE (Museum of Contemporary Art & Planning Exhibition) designed by Zaha Hadid resembles a floating spaceship, and the Shenzhen Talent Park on the shores of Shenzhen Bay combines skyscrapers with expansive green spaces and a waterfront promenade that becomes the meeting point for the entire city at sunset. But Shenzhen is more than glass and steel. The OCT Loft Creative Culture Park transforms a former industrial area into a labyrinth of galleries, cafés, indie bookstores, and design studios — Shenzhen's answer to Berlin's Kreuzberg. The Dafen Oil Painting Village is unique in the world: A village full of painters who create reproductions of old masters on one hand, and increasingly their own contemporary works on the other. And the mangrove nature reserve in the middle of the city — right next to the skyline — is home to rare migratory birds and black-faced spoonbills, a surreal coexistence of skyscrapers and wilderness.