Summer vacation in Shenzhen① 

Hello everyone. Hyon Kim, an engineer, here. 

Autumn has begun and the weather has become more comfortable. How are you all? 

Today and in next blog, I would like to talk about my trip to Shenzhen, China during my summer vacation. Nowadays, Shenzhen is considered as China’s Silicon Valley especially as a hardware mecca, and tech companies representing the country have gathered. I have been very interested in Shenzhen, where the development of hardware, which is the root of manufacturing, is very active. I bought flight tickets to Shenzhen for my summer vacations. I would like to introduce the impressive things I have seen out there. 

QR code everywhere 

First of all, roaming in the city, I found that QR codes are far more widespread than that in Japan. Cashless payment, which began to spread in Japan, was of course very common and all menu browsing and ordering at restaurants were done by QR codes. To see menu and order food, just scan a QR code by your smartphone. Those QR codes are normally printed on tables. 

WeChat Pay, AliPay and such were mainly accepted. Often there was no cashier in shops. If there is no cashless app for your payment on your smartphone, a staff of a shop ask you to give money to him/her personally and the clerk will settle the payment on his/her smartphone instead. No joke, this process happens. 

The food in Shenzhen was very delicious! People there said that since people here are normally from across China, you can enjoy all kinds of Chinese food here.    

It is quite inconvenient without a smartphone in Shenzhen. There are battery stations all over the city, and there was a really efficient system that reads and registers with QR codes, charges them while moving, and returns them to other stations when finished. 

A guide in museum is available by QR codes. 

Famous city of electric devices’ parts. 

Shenzhen has a famous electric town, Huaqiang North Electric Town. A lot of small parts of hardware are sold in the region. Although I could not see all the places and shops, there are so many types of parts of the smartphone and LED, and it seems that a smartphone can be made just by walking in the electric town. There seems to be parts of everything. I dream when I wonder if I will buy these parts from this wholesaler and make various creative hardware prototypes to make a business. 

There is also an IoT showroom which are about rooms that can be controlled by sensors and human voice. Various small toy drones and creative musical instruments were also sold. 

Not only hardware, but also applications that can be used in daily life have deeply penetrated into the society, and I felt it was an top-notch advanced IT country. 

Next time I will write about my Shenzhen trip ②.