spencer wright

In the morning, in Shenzhen

This pool was really charming.

I believe all the "emergency shack" stuff is about tents, for in case of a natural disaster.

I strongly recommend this place.

This guy on the right was really excited to teach us how to use these things. They were kind of like diabolos, but different. His English was pretty good, and he said he had lived in Shenzhen all his life - which is rare. In 1980, the population of Shenzhen was only 30,000; today, its around 10 million.

^ Read that last sentence again and think about it. It's crazy.

These places start late morning, and keep humming into the night. A *lot* of shipping gets done here, but it's all shifted to the end of the day.

This city is really green - much more so than, say, NY or SF.

This huge sign was blocking off one of the main streets in Shenzhen, right near all of the electronics malls. They appeared to be building a new subway line underneath it, and the sign read:

"Speed up the transformation and upgradation (sic) to create an international e-business city."

This is really fascinating to me - the collective willingness to put up with massive construction projects in order to build a lasting, powerful commercial culture. More thoughts on the subject here.

There were a few similar shops around Shenzhen. Interestingly, I never saw anyone using any of these things.

People who don't eat street food ALL THE TIME when they're in China are doing it all wrong.

This lady was passing a bag full of something over the wall at this factory. Couldn't tell what was up with that...

Taken in Dongguan.

This lady was passing a bag full of something over the wall at this factory. Couldn't tell what was up with that...

There were similar signs all over Shenzhen and Dongguan (where this was taken).

Between industrial parks.

There was one of these at many of the industrial parks we saw in Dongguan. We were told they were for water - not sure what it was used for.

This is a subtropical climate. It rains randomly.

As I do.

They're everywhere, and look really useful.

This was kinda cool - some of the tiles must have been repaired with concrete, and it looks like they used rebar to recreate the grid pattern. Clever.

I love these people and their transportation modes.

I think it was a hotel. This strip had a few of them, which all seemed to date from the 90s.

Modeling + walnut nectar (!) from the hotel minibar.

Getting online was a mixed bag. A few of the hotels we stayed at had VPNs, but they were hit or miss: Google might work, but Twitter never did. Somehow CloudMagic (the iOS mail client that I recently switched to) worked no matter what. We made do, but next time I'd probably get a VPN for myself.

These boats were great - and really rocky :)

The ferries in Hong Kong never turn around; they just drive forwards and backwards across the harbor. In order to always keep the passengers sitting forward, the backs on the benches just slide back and forth. Clever.

Our hotel wasn't within walking distance of street food, so we enjoyed some post-colonial breakfast. 

The construction here is crazy - as it is in most of China.

I like that he had a matchbox car version of the car he was driving. The HK taxis all seem to run on LPG, and most of them have cameras facing both inside and outside.

Dan was an amazing tour guide in Hong Kong. He's traveled extensively in the area, and has a good perspective on the design and manufacturing ecosystem there. He also brought us to some awesome restaurants.