Shenzhen takeaways - Is this tech city the SF of China?
December 14, 2025
I visited Shenzhen for the first time in December 2025, and holy shit, it was a W experience.
I’d only been to China once before, so I knew roughly what to expect. But this time I wasn’t solo traveling. I was with a friend, which meant I got to experience the “first China experience” again, but in third person. Watching someone else process China for the first time is always fun haha.
Geographically, Shenzhen reminds me of San Francisco. It’s by the water, dense, modern, but this is like SF on steroids. Well before getting into the takeaways I need to braindump some First Impressions.
First Impressions
Before we even landed, I could feel the productivity energy and the courage to just talk to people.
In Northern Europe, you avoid sitting next to strangers on the bus. In China, it’s the complete opposite. You feel soo encouraged to talk to anyone.
On the plane, a guy behind us overheard me and my friend talking. Turns out he was also a software engineer. One conversation later, we ended up hanging out with him the entire day. That simply wouldn’t happen anywhere else.
When I landed, I immediately noticed AI ads everywhere. On the jet bridge walls, inside the airport, everywhere. “AI” and “AGI” were plastered all over the place.
I honestly didn’t expect AI to be this integrated IRL. Earlier this year in Shanghai, I barely saw anything like this. Seeing it here was super fucking cool.
The City Is Insane
Shenzhen isn’t even China’s biggest city, yet the skyline is insane. Every Saturday they run a light show across the skyscrapers but sadly, it was canceled the weekend I was there 😭
The fifth tallest building in the world is here too: Ping An Tower, almost 500 meters tall. You can go up, but it costs around $20. No thanks. Our $150/night hotel already had insane views. Tbh in SF, this would easily be $1,000 per night minimum.
The streets felt so calm and clean. Almost every car and taxi was electric, which made the streets be so quiet. The only sounds I could hear was the constant honking of the scooters though lmao. But it was better compared to Hong Kong, where many cars are still powered by gasoline, the air quality here felt noticeably better.
Scooters are everywhere, and they are all electric ones. They fly past you on sidewalks at full speed. This is probably a thing that you hate until you get a scooter on your own lmao.
Bikes are also insanely cheap. You can rent a Meituan bike for 1.5 yuan per 30 minutes. Roads are smooth, clean, and perfect for biking, so we just biked places sometimes because it was easier.
Takeaways
Everywhere felt safe
There are cameras everywhere. At first that felt a bit dystopian, but after a day or two I completely forgot about it. You can actually walk around at midnight without a single fear in the world of getting mugged.
I paid, chatted, ordered food, booked taxis, doomscrolled, and contacted factories all in one app. Everything happens on WeChat, which makes things move insanely fast. There are also mini-apps inside WeChat for basically everything, like FiveGuys has it's own app inside WeChat. Lol it's amazing.
Communication is so fast
We visited factories and scheduled everything casually over WeChat. No long email threads, no formal bullshit. Just fast communication and chill conversation. Shit, they even started sending goofy GIFs after a day LMAO, I love it.
Insane builder density
I tweeted that I was in Shenzhen and ended up meeting so many cracked people. One guy moved there alone from Morocco at 17. Another from the Czech Republic at 19 to build AI glasses. I also met people working at TikTok. And then of course the guy behind us on the airplane.
From the left: Jan Ferenc, Elliot Lindberg, Rayan, Isaak Sundeman
Here we met the two cracked ppl who work for Tiktok
It's a high-trust society
The metro driver’s compartment wasn’t even separated from the passenger area. The only thing blocking you is a small band. I could theoretically just walk up to the driver, like whaaat... this blew my mind!
This was on the line 11 I believe in the Shenzhen metro. Mindblowing
Rent a powerbank anywhere
Meituan stations are everywhere, where you can rent these yellow powerbanks for super cheap prices. It's so nice when walking around for hours and not having to worry about where to charge my phone.
Public transport
Normal train tickets were insanely cheap, but sometimes so packed you couldn’t fit. I once took business class for 3x the price and it was still cheap as fuck. Normal tickets were like $0.20.
Nightlife is ehhh
There is nightlife around the Futian area, but nothing like Shanghai or Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is 15 mins away
The train to Hong Kong takes about 15 minutes. It’s super easy to cross over for meetings or nightlife, which is way better there.
Something fun happened on this train that I have to tell you about.
I wasn’t sure if I’d found the right train. My ticket said platform 3, and while walking down to the platform, every sign also said platform 3. But once I actually got down there, the sign suddenly said platform 5. That made me confused as fuck, so I asked two foreigners in front of me if this train was going to Hong Kong. They assured me it was.
That wasn’t the fun part yet.
While I was putting my luggage on the rack, they passed me in the corridor. One of them then stopped and asked,
“Sorry, by the way, are you Elliot?”
Then he pulled out his phone and showed me my Twitter/X profile.
I was like… nooo way 😂 lmaooo. Getting recognized on a random train, on the other side of the world, in China, was insane. Anyways back to the takeaways.
Very few tourists
People were often surprised to see a foreigner. Most foreigners I saw were Russians or older people on business trips. Very few young western travelers.
English isn’t common
Outside international universities and factories, people generally don’t speak English. Chinese helps a lot.
But speaking Chinese is fun as fuck
The moment you speak Chinese, people start doing backflips. Ok maybe not backcflips literally, but they get syper hyped. Security guards looked intimidating at first, but were super nice once I spoke to them.
Huaqiangbei is crazyy
There’s a massive tech market called Huaqiangbei 华强北, located east of Futian, where you can buy $12 AirPod ripoffs, find real computer parts, negotiate deals, and connect directly with manufacturers.
Universities are massive
We visited a university campus that felt like an entire city. They even had buses to move around campus. Lots of international students but not many Europeans or Americans.
The UX of apps is ass
Many apps are insanely cluttered with features. The functionality is crazy, but the UX often suffers.
It's hard not to sidequest
We sidequested too hard, that I accidentally lost 4 kg ON MY BULK. I'm here trying to go up in weight, then I accidentally walk 35k steps every day for a week and well...
Just go outside when you are in china, talk to people and dare to write to them on wechat. We ex. ended up playing mahjong in a random shopping mall with strangers at 11pm.
Drones deliver your food
I ordered McDonald’s via drone using a QR code and WeChat. My food arrived in 8 minutes.
https://x.com/robiot/status/1997899246956327280
You can play ping pong with uncs at midnight
We had some time to spare before going to eat hotpot and celebrating my friends birthday, so we walked to a nearby park. There we saw what looked like a tennis court, but turns out it was just a bunch of ping pong table.
We just pulled up and started playing some ball with an unc lmao.
Uncs are athletic
We took the Didi taxi 1.5 hours away from the city centre to a peninsula called Dapeng ($12 ride btw), where we climbed a mountain. The views were stunning, but what surprized me the most was the amount of 50-70 year olds jumping around on rocks near the coastline and climbing the mountain. Insaneee.
You can actually focus on building
Cheap taxis, cheap food, fast logistics, insane talent density, and a feeling of safety make it incredibly easy to focus.
So is Shenzhen the SF of China?
It is a very good city for building because you can focus on building, everything is convenient, you have cheap taxis, and cheap foods. On top of that there is so much talent in this city. So to summarize, I would call this the SF of china, but for hardware and without the risk of getting mugged everyday ;)