Shenzhen

Location: Shenzhen, China

We flew early Wednesday morning to Shenzhen, China. This is a city in mainland China, on the border of Hong Kong-sort of like the last outpost before Hong Kong. The city has sprouted up practically overnight since the reunification between Hong Kong and China, and is definitely up and coming-there are many tall office buildings and fancy hotels being built, with many more under construction:

We stayed the Century Plaza Hotel, which may be the nicest hotel we stayed in so far. It was very close to the train station to Hong Kong, and also very close to the Luo Wu Market. This is the main market of Shenzhen, very similar to the Hongquiao Market in Beijing, except much bigger. This market I was able to get some photos of:

There are great deals to be found here-prices are a fraction of what they would be in the U.S. Ben had been here before, and knew about one of the best deals around-custom suits. The way it works is, you enter the fabric section of the store (shown in the third picture above). There are salespeople for different tailor shops mulling around the area, luring potential customers to a fabric stand. Ultimately, you find a stand, and start looking at the different materials available. These fabrics are pretty high quality; some are only available from better designers in Europe and the U.S. After picking out a fabric, you pay for it at the stand, and follow the tailor salesperson to the tailor's shop, on another floor of the market. Here, you specify the design elements that you want; single or double-breasted, 3 buttons, 4 buttons, pleated or flat pants, etc. The tailor then takes your measurements, and gives you a receipt. The following day, you come for a fitting, and then the suit is ready the day after. The total price turned out to be about 850 yuan for each suit, or roughly 113 dollars. These suits would probably be worth about 6-700 dollars in the U.S. Ultimately, Ben and I each got two suits. I got a very nice double-breasted chocolate colored suit, and a standard single-breasted gray suit. Here's a picture of us with the tailors:

Ultimately, we had to head into Hong Kong the following day, and we couldn't pick up the suits that day, so Ben had to go back to Shenzhen from Hong Kong to pick them up. Unfortunately, I shipped them to Ben's apartment in Singapore right after I got them, so no pictures of me in the suits!

The rest of the time in Shenzhen, we took it easy-walked around the market, and looked at many many different knockoff Omegas and Rolexes, DVD's, and other things that you would expect to find in a haphazard Chinese marketplace. Thursday, we headed to Hong Kong by rail.