Shenzhen China: Our 3rd stop

After the near tropical Sanya we headed north enroute to Hong Kong.  However, before we went to Hong Kong we spent a day in the city of Shenzhen which is right across the border from Hong Kong.  Shenzhen was the first place that mainland china experimented with capitalism after Mao died in the late 70’s.  Shenzhen rose from a small town back then to MILLIONS now.  It doesn’t have quite the Shanghai skyscraper craze or the European glitz of Hong Kong.  Many Chinese don’t care for or rather don’t “respect” Shenzhen because it doesn’t have the history that is part of most major Chinese cities.  Most major cities have been around for centuries and have had major roles in history but not Shenzhen.  However, if you were a pioneering Chinese businessman it was likely in Shenzhen that you got your business off the ground and made you first millions.

Here is one skyscraper that I would have expected to be located in the modern Oz….as in the Oz of Dorothy and Toto.

One of Shenzhen’s claim to fame is a major park that has gardens that include scale models of the major Chinese attractions found throughout china such as a replica of the great wall, the Summer palace, the Tibetan temples in Lhasa, etc..  In part it seems kinda phoney but the gardens and exhibits are actually very well done. Clearly a lot of money was put into this.  There are also cultural shows / exhibits from all over China here.

There are so many fantastic trees that you just stare at and wonder how long it took to grow into such a magnificent work of art.

  

Below is a model of Tibetan Buddhist temple in Lhasa…it isn’t a little model!

Other of the models were quite small by comparison

Here is the great wall!

And here is the temples built in the cliffs that we saw the ruins for when we took the silk road trip (that would have been the northern silk road tour that we saw last October.

One of the more interesting demonstrations were of the mongols.  Ghengis Khan conquered most of China and influenced sections of China and obviously chinese history. 

Here is a video of a water powered chimes....very clever...unfortunately the video doesn't do the sound justice.

But I think the flowers and gardens were my favorite part! 

These blossoms look almost too good to be true......

These blossoms were too good to be true.  The flowers and little green leaves are plastic segments that have been meticulously wired onto the tree branches.  This was January...by March the real blossoms would eventually come!  Most of the gardens however were real plants.

After leaving the park we drove by this stadium which was a very large beautiful work of art...or at least I thought it was amazing!