Written March 2015.

I looked around me. Within the heavy lines of people I didn’t spot another white face – anyone to recommend a hostel or cheap hotel to stay. I’d not yet got around to buying a phrase book either. And on attempting to log into the free WiFi via my phone I was confronted by a beautiful but illegible array of Chinese characters. I was in the train station of the city of Shenzhen, my gateway into China after walking across the border from Hong Kong. Hungover, tired, and with the combination of mis-understood directions and morning after idleness I’d managed to miss my train. The next was not until the next morning.

I wandered the floor in a daze pointing and asking for help to log in. I eventually found it in a woman who spoke some words of English. The field I’d found incomprehensible was asking for a phone number, and she kindly gifted hers. Internet armed I found my phone’s web browser unresponsive. I’d learn the next day that this is because Google is currently entirely blocked in China, which isn’t too helpful for a Google Android phone. But at least WhatsApp was working. I sent out a plea to those in accommodating time zones. Give me the name and address of a hostel in Shenzhen. Any with space will do. A friend from Australia came to my aid. I just needed to make my way to Lingzhi metro station and then follow the map she sent. Just one more large queue for another ticket and I’d be on my way.

Twenty minutes later the metro seemed to be taking too long, as it rose overground and zoomed efficiently pass green hills. I was certainly heading far from the centre, only committed to the journey, I awaited my suburban fate. Raising out of Lingzhi station I found myself in anything but. It felt like stepping out into the heart of a capital city. Buildings rose high. Big buildings. Those that take up a block. And large blocks at that. The traffic was hectic, horns beating and fumes filling the air. Pedestrians crammed the wide pavements, wall to wall restaurants and shops lined up alongside them. It was here that I realised that Shenzhen had to be a huge city. To become a rule of thumb in China: Just because I’d only just heard of this city – it didn’t mean that it was in anyway small.

I was in an area called Bao’an. Far from a suburb, it was another city in it’s self. A neighbourhood of more than 2 million people. I marched through the smog, my backpack causing me to break into a sweat. Passing the young and fashionable dressed. Apparently this is the industrial centre of Shenzhen, home of the electronics factories. And it’s booming too – as population and living standards rise. Enormous shopping malls. New gleaming high rises. Yet the friendly hostel I was seeking turns out to be a hotel with a receptionist that speaks no English. My train is early the following morning, and I doubt that there is any affordable transport that can get me there in time. It’s all I can to to get on the receptions WiFi to send out another plea for help. This time I rooted for a local.

I’d chatted to Summer via the app Tinder. In short it’s a dating app of the most shallow kind. But over the course of the past months on the road I’ve also used it to meet locals in a more plutonic friendly manner. We’d matched over her proximity to Hong Kong, and she said that if I was ever in Shenzhen we should meet. Well here was her chance. She agreed to meet me for dinner and, as a response to my sense of desperation, to help me find a place to stay. There was a Starbucks in at the CoCoPark, the most central place in the city. She’d see me there.

I retreated back to the centre. Slightly calmer in the metros air conditioning now I knew at least where I’d be getting off. The carriage was still too busy for seats. I dumped my over-packed rucksack onto the floor (weighed down by all those Spanish books that I never got around to sending home – linguistic and physical exercises in one) for my own make-shift chair. I emerged at the Conference centre, finding a Starbucks just outside the exit. For all my distaste of their coffee, their was comfort in the familiarity now. (Familiarity here included the prices. I ordered a sandwich and a coffee for near enough what I’d pay in the UK.) Waiting longer than I expected for Summer’s arrival, I scratched a connection on the one WiFi point free from incomprehension. I was in the wrong Starbucks. That modern city meeting dilemma. But unperturbed Summer came to find me. British charm (or at least the aspiration of foreigners to find it in you!) is a useful passport for the world.

She arrived to tell me of her own day’s dramas. Hiking in the mountains of the city (those hills I’d seen from the metro window earlier) her friend had sprained her ankle. The friend had been too engrossed in her smartphone screen to pay adequate attention to the path. Nature’s karma. Summer had practically carried her back to the city before meeting me. Yet good spirited, she still had some appetite for walking. Some research via phone and foot showed us that Shenzhen’s hostels were nothing more than apartments fitted out with bunk beds in large grey apartment blocks. They were also all full. This is not a sign of Shenzhen’s tourist credentials. Rather they were occupied by long stayers here for work. Summer offered me her sofa instead. A short taxi ride away her one bedroom apartment was one of hundreds within her block. Yet it was spacious, and offered great views of the city that was continuing to sprout around her. After dropping off my bags and sharing some fruit (the refreshing star shaped yellow carambola – one of the nice things about being in Asia is the myriad of fresh new fruits) we headed back to dinner to the CoCoPark.

Back in the large identikit shopping mall we exchange life stories over food. She’s a recruitment consultant that moved here a few years years ago. Someone to aid the mass of migrants that continue to move into the city. She has a brother, a rarity within the context of China’s one child policy, allowed she is part of the Dong ethnic minority (one of 55 minority groups officially recognised by China. The idea that the country is one homogenous mass of more than 1 billion people is a myth). She likes to travel. Something that’s a challenge to most Chinese workers given limited vacation times. It’s made easier for Summer by the fact that she’s become self employed. This also helps her avoid draconian bosses. I later meet a girl who is docked half a days pay for being 10 minutes late, and a full day if it’s half an hour. For missing a day unscheduled – she’d probably lose her job. Summer is much more lax on herself. There’s no such thing as a rigid start time at her desk.

Before returning to the apartment we walked around the centre. First through one street newly built bars underneath the shopping mall. They were sharply decorated, modern in look. Populated by the finely dressed. Couples. Groups playing dice. Gossiping women. All under the ambience of low lighting and well mixed dance music. From what I gather this is ‘the’ street in town to go drinking. The others haven’t been built yet. Culture and breadth of entertainment haven’t been part of Shenzhen’s urban plan. Summer is having three months off drinking as an exercise in will and healthy drinking (maybe something I should try sometime), and so we walk on, through the now quiet streets between the skyscrapers. The largest is still under construction. The Ping An Finance Centre will be 600m all and is set to be the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa. Yet it’s surrounded by many others that still collectively dwarf the skyline of any European city. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange is one construction of architectural creativity. Not unlike a rectangular sword pointed fearlessly to the sky. The city is southern China’s main financial hub, and the building is also a testament to the enormous amounts of money that has been invested into this city from home and abroad since Shenzhen became China’s first Special Economic Zone in 1980. By an act of legislation, capitalism was allowed to let rip, free of the controls over the rest of the country. Out of sight, a couple of kilometres down the road there is also one of the worlds busiest container ports, which now takes in even more cargo than Hong Kong’s across the border.

For all it’s size and scale Shenzhen is still growing. It’s yet cited as one of the fastest growing cities in the world. More buildings, more business, more migrants will pore in. Only 40 years ago Shenzhen was a small fishing town of about 30,000 people. It’s been bulldozed and transformed into a city of 15 million. And if we take the lens back further, this is only one part of the metropolis that surrounds the Pearl River Delta. Shenzhen and HK are part of a collection of merging cities that take in more than 50 million people. It’s the world’s biggest metropolis, still spreading out higher and wider. No other place is a more startling demonstration of modern day China. A lot is written regarding this, China’s economic rise, but it’s also perhaps the largest social experiment the world has ever seen. A new society of migrants looking to define their place in their new world.