Coco Park, Shenzhen China

With this post, I'll add some images I took yesterday as I toodled around ... this is the Civic Center in the Coco Park area in Shenzhen. It's hard to describe the size of the center ... The whole complex is probably five or six city blocks long - this central image makes it look a little like a pagoda-inspired design. The undulating roof is reminiscent of gentle waves in the ocean. I'm shooting this back from a public square in which is looks like the city recently had a festival. The Smiley guy is one of many images and it looks as though there are a number of these running throughout the city ... I think there was a torch relay in preparation for the Asian Games that will be held here in about two weeks.

So yesterday was my first trek onto the subway (very clean, inexpensive and safe) and actual walking about the city. Today I'm headed over to the She Kou area of the city ... this is where my service apartment is located and I'm hoping to move in there later this week. Thus far I've been staying at the Marriott, which is close to the office and convenient, but you don't really get out to explore the city. The She Kou area also has SeaWorld Shenzhen, a large mall called City Garden Mall, and the ubiquitous Wal-Mart. It has a large expat community, so I'll be able to find places to get my haircut, check out movies, etc. This man, at least, does not live by bread, or work, alone.

In the Coco Park area, which I walked around in for several hours, there is also a Mall. I've determined, at least based on one China mall experience, that there is a certain "mall pace" that exists around the world. While the citizens in general walk pretty quickly, like what I experienced in Japan, at the Mall, everyone becomes glacial in their pace. The only Western stores I saw were related to food (McD's, Starbucks, KFC), but all of the stores had a distinctly Western style to them (images, mannequins, etc). The most amazing thing was that, in a city of roughly 12 million people, I bumped into someone from the Human Resource team I'll be working with who was visiting the mall with her family. It was great to meet them all and to have a chance to visit for a bit before I continued my journey.

I'm going to wrap this one up as I'm off to explore some more!