July 5 | In the clouds, Shenzhen

4:46 PM - Hello from the clouds! I’m currently on my flight from Shenzhen to Beijing, which will be around 3 hours. Note to self – always remember to charge your laptop before a flight. Guess I have 34 minutes of blog writing and iTunes before resorting back to listening to the screaming baby behind me. (Another note to self, always charge your cellphone as well). Day 7 of our trip and I cannot believe how fast the past week has been… but weirdly slow at the same time, seeing we casually explored HK, ran our first conference and are on our way to conference #2 in just a span of a week! Maximizing every second of my life here really makes me reconsider how unproductive I can be back at home.

Not going to lie, I’m pretty bummed out to leave Shenzhen. I am in love. Shenzhen is absolutely beautiful. Not the conventional beauty that we are used to in Canada but so charming in its own way. I’ve been to other Asian cities before so I wasn’t really taken aback by the cultural differences but for those who haven’t been to Asia before, here are some notable differences. First, the audacity of the drivers on the street is astounding, cars and motorbikes can drive insanely close – too close for comfort if you’re sitting in a car and see a gigantic 2-story bus just a foot from your window. Nothing ever closes here – you can literally walk on the main road at 11 pm and see people casually getting haircuts at some flashy salon on steroids Restaurants on restaurants on restaurants, random street corner carts selling snacks and drinks, the never-ending honking from cars, people just sitting on the streets, cars parked on sidewalks and pretty sure I saw both incoming and outgoing traffic on the same roads. Pretty much every woman carries an umbrella when walking to avoid the sun, then you have the girls and I trying to wear as little as possible to build a tan – I will never understand this.

I’m going to miss the flashy signs that light up the streets – the irony is that everything is so flashy, yet at the same time, the people seem so simple, and so humble. Shenzhen was such a contrast to HK where the streets are flooded with designer stores, flashy skyscrapers and hundreds of people crossing the street at the same time. I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed this simplicity. HK was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nothing too different than the hustle and bustle of living in such developed city centres in Canada. So living like a local for a week in Shenzhen was such a refreshing experience, down to the little things like walking to the market to pick up fresh fruits, to waking up every morning and looking out to palm trees, and colourful tin roofs of the surrounding houses. The sounds, the noise, the smells – everything was absolutely charming.