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Published: August 4th 2023
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Another weekend, another part of Shenzhen to explore. Today it was the turn of Minzhi, which is situated in Longhua district. I don't think I've been to Longhua before, maybe to an art gallery, but I'm really not sure. I was shocked when I came out of Minzhi subway station to see how busy it was. I know it was a Saturday evening, but I didn't expect there to be so many people about. Another sign that Covid is well and truly over. We headed down the packed main street and into one of the urban villages nearby. One of the guys was telling me that during Covid all these villages were locked up and if you didn't live there you couldn't enter. Now we were able to freely wander the streets. We wandered the backstreets, which were filled mainly with places dedicated to food; markets, restaurants, shops, and food stalls. We wandered around another one or two urban villages in this section, watching people go about their daily life. A great scene was about four or five Meituan sitting on a stairwell, taking a break in between deliveries. The stairwell was pretty dark and they were resting, illuminated by the
glow of their mobile phones or cigarettes. A good tip someone gave me years ago when I first moved to Asia (Korea) was to always look up as there is so much more to see that what is at street level. I like looking up at apartment blocks and imagining what is going on in those lit rooms; people working, resting, caring for their families, children playing. We came across a bit of a traffic jam as the streets are quite choked with parked cars and delivery drivers buzzing about on their ebikes.
We headed back to the main street, which was even busier than before. There were lots of open fronted food shops, which were doing a roaring trade. I do wonder how people stay fairly slim here as the amount of food on sale and consumed is so much. We headed to another urban village in a different direction from the station. We spent a while wandering the streets there. To be honest, there wasn't too much to see as the area was pretty quiet. There were some restaurants and shops, but businesses seemed to just be ticking over rather than busy, especially compared to the main
street. We also didn't see any Mahjong parlours in action. It was a bit of a chilly night and I think maybe more people were staying home or going to more popular areas.
To finish off the evening, we headed to a Xinjiang restaurant for some beers and BBQ. The food was really good. I feasted on lamb, squid, aubergine, mushrooms, and bread. All really, really tasty and washed down with some nice beers. Although it was a cool and slightly windy evening, we sat outside and it was a great place to people watch not just those going by, but people dining al fresco at the other restaurants in the plaza. After a couple of hours, it was time to head for the subway home.
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