The Shen’z Hen
So if anybody is thinking about visiting Shenzhen (and god knows why you would be thinking that) on holiday I can fully advise you not to. There are no interesting tourist sites, the weather is a touch humid and the smog is like most places in China. If however you are going to visit an old friend who lives out there teaching you can indeed have a great time.
I got to spend a week on the couch and a ridiculously great canvas camping bed in my friend Alex’s place and enjoyed it immensely. After a month of solid travelling, sightseeing, people snoring in hostels and all the other bugbears of travelling it was nice to not have any temple’s to see, any gardens to admire or any obnoxious 18 year olds to ignore. Yes, I’m getting old.
Recounting everything that happened in Shenzhen would mostly be a list of restaurants, train journeys and time spent doing very little so I won’t bore with you every intricate detail but just some of the highlights.
One of the nights we went to a massage place, which I had questioned Al about profusely to make sure it was legitimate and not some badly labelled brasshouse. Anyway he was indeed correct and the place was entirely kosher, as long as you don’t count seeing numerous naked Chinese men. Anyway the sauna and heated pools were delightful and we followed them up with a massage.
My masseus practically shit herself when seeing how hairy I was and then proceeded to be a lazy fucker who did very little but watch the TV in the corner of the room. I gave her a shit tip, which she fully deserved. We spent the night sleeping in lazy boys in there and then left the next day. It was a rather different experience and apparently an option many Chinese businessmen take instead of getting a mid-level hotel – sleep on a lazy boy, go to the sauna and get a massage for the same or less. Seems not a bad idea!
My favourite place in Shenzhen however had to be they NYPD. Yes you read that right; the New York Pizza Delivery. Home of absolutely astonishingly good pizza, reasonably priced beer and a take a book leave a book shelf. Fantastic. We went there twice during my time in the city and I could have quite happily gone twice more.
Of course the best bit about it was catching up with someone from home, being able to use the Hartlepool dialect, where words such as “Dut”, “Ding” and “Radge” are all perfectly acceptable in conversation. We caught up about people at home, the price of a pint in our local and how much we could both bloody murder a parmo something rotten. Mmm breaded chickeny goodness.
I met Al’s lovely Chinese girlfriend Faye and many of his fellow teachers in Shenzhen who both surprisingly and unsurprisingly reminded me often of people from HCMC. I guess TEFL teaching takes a special kind of individual?
Anyway I had an excellent time in Shenzhen though I still don’t reccomend you go as a tourist.
Love and Duts
J. Xx
