I had no idea where we were going. Tim knew exactly where we were going. He’s done this before. Lots of times. Our primary goal was to buy lots of inexpensive games for the kids in the orphanage. We -off course- couldn’t buy games where the rest of Shenzhen would buy games and –heaven’s forbid- pay retail. Nope, we had to work our way to a mall/warehouse deep in the urban maze where Tim has a connection. Tim, of course, has a connection for everything.The building looked old, but isn’t really. It only looked old. Everything in Shenzhen is new, it all just looks really tired. Thirty years ago, Shenzhen was a tiny fishing village just over the border from Hong Kong. But then, in the late 1970s, China declared Shenzhen and the surrounding area a Special Economic Zone. In other words, the loosened the strictures of a planned economy and unleashed unfettered, free-wheeling capitalism. And you can guess what happened. Fortunes –both large and small- were made and Shenzhen grew like crazy. It quickly swelled to eight million people. Shenzhen is China’s second fastest growing city. There hasn’t been much time to worry about aesthetics or planning in general.
On one hand, Shenzhen is an ugly, concrete, 800-square mile megalopolis; but on the other hand, Shenzhen stands as a beautiful testament to what happens when you allow people to do good for themselves.
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