Since landing 11 days ago, Martin has had his apartment turned into home. His ladies have returned. The apartment which was spotless when we arrived rapidly deteriorated. 4 suitcases needed unpacking as did 20 or so boxes. The last box has now been unpacked… but on going to open a can of coconut milk last week I found that the tin opener had not come with everything else. Nor indeed had my baking trays, cooking racks, oven gloves, garlic press, lemon zest grater, tennis racket, badminton racket and binoculars. They are languishing in our house in boarding and so now comes the task of getting them reunited with us. The person who moved in after us didn’t really realise what had been left, nor indeed had Martin realised sooner since he didn’t do those sports, or bake.

The binoculars are my grandfather’s. I am not sure why I thought it was necessary to bring them to China 9 years ago – but actually now we have a view, I can’t wait to get them back and look properly!

Shenzhen is divided into nine districts, one of those districts is Nanshan and this is where we live and work. Nanshan is further divided subdistricts, one of which is Shekou. Shekou is our home and is about 25 or so minutes by car to school. We have yet to do that journey in rush hour. It is also about 45 minutes using the metro door to door.

We live on the 15th floor, in a 3 bed apartment with a large study/rabbit room. Our living room and bedroom overlooks the view above.

The boats in the direct view do not seem to move but there is a harbour to the left of our view and there are some boats that go out and in and in the distance we can see the airport boats and on other occasions we can see the container ships pass on the horizon. Shenzhen is the world’s fourth busiest port (some suggest it might be third). First being Shanghai, then Singapore and then either Shenzhen or Ningbo/Zhoushan. Either way it is busy and those container ships are massive.

The sun hasn’t consistently made an appearance since our arrival, we are in the tropics and so we have had a couple of heavy downpours. On one occasion the heavens opened just as our taxi pulled up. On Sunday the taxi we were in, slowed right down as his visibility was extremely restricted due to the the rain deluge. The thunder is loud but we haven’t had any lightening yet- or none that I have seen yet! The cool thing about where we live is that we can see the rain come in over the sea. Temperature wise it feels cooler than Suzhou sometimes because it is cooler, but other times it is because of the sea breeze!

The streets by us are lined with palm trees, but sadly this isn’t an area that has dedicated bike lanes. This is probably the only road in Shekou that looks like the pavements are wide – and while it is, the pavement is shared with bikes and e-bikes.

It has been something of a shock walking places and not taking public transport or cars everywhere. Though today, I took the metro to my new hairdressers. It was a 10 or so minute walk to the metro from our apartment, then a further 10 minute walk to the hairdressers. Even when we lived in Suzhou in the community it wasn’t a city where you could walk everywhere.

I have even loaded Hattie up onto our cart and walked her to the vet’s.

Amazingly the shops that back onto our complex are places that are necessary for us!We are spoilt for choice for vets on this stretch of the street by our apartment – or so I thought but on my first excursion, the vet’s assistant on reading my translation of “do you cut the nails and worm rabbits” just said no. And of course everything in me just wanted to ask why but I knew it would be no use. They would answer but I wouldn’t understand and they weren’t going to change their mind!

The second vet’s I went to, said yes and then we found out just how small the world is…

On coming out with Hattie, there was a woman there talking away to her dog. It was an Irish accent so we got talking. She had been in Shenzhen for 2 weeks, prior to that she was in Beijing. I told her where I worked and told her that my husband had been in Shenzhen since July. On that nugget of info she then asked me if my husband was Martin. It transpired that she was friends with one of our new colleagues that Martin had been out with!

Other necessary things are a dry cleaners (400rmb (£43/€50/$55USD xe.com) spent this morning on 4 jackets and 9 pairs of trousers that will be back on Friday) and a shop called Silver Palate- a shop that is dangerous for the expat for it stocks a whole supermarket in not a large space! (Cadbury’s chocolate just for an example)

Health Checks

Every time you start a new job/enter into China on a long term basis, A health check needs to be conducted. This is now my 3rd health check. And this time the process was marginally better than Suzhou. The first check was August 2014 when I arrived as a supporting spouse, and the second time was when I had my work visa.

The health check is my version of a treasure hunt. As another colleague put it, how to turn a single corridor into a maze. You have to collect stamps after completing tasks. Giving blood (the first task), producing a urine sample (the last) and in-between an ECG, ultrasound, chest XRay, an eye test and a height/weight/BMI check!

Apparently the results arrived at school today I am guessing I am fine as next week we will have the appointment to transfer my Z visa to a year’s residence permit.

Food

I have always loved mooching around markets and when I realised that we couldn’t eat out all the time, there was a request for a Thai green chicken curry. The only part of that we had was rice (I even had to go and buy a tin opener to open the coconut milk). I found Shekou market and was blown away by the fresh fish and vegetables on offer. The fruit is sourced at local shops by us as can the veggies but the fish market is a source of wonder and I will need to go back with some recipes in mind.

As well as the local market there are so many choices of restaurants here, and unlike in SIP (the area we lived in in Suzhou) where finding restaurants on the streets was hard, we haven’t eaten in a shopping mall!

A regular of ours in Suzhou, Baker and Spice is also in Shenzhen. A bakery but also a restaurant. Both Martin and Eleanor love the Pesto Pasta with pinenuts and feta. Eleanor only found one close to it in the UK and that was in Edinburgh!

Our first meal in Shenzhen was at Oggi’s. Seemingly on the street, we arrived after dark. I walked past it on Sunday and the view is one that doesn’t have buildings in it- definitely need to go there early evening!

There is a Mexican restaurant that does superb (and large) margaritas and enchiladas. It puts the “Mexican” food we had in Suzhou to shame.

Many of these restaurants are located at Sea World. A vibrant area of Shekou that is only a 15 minute walk from home and on the metro from school.

Now the eagle eyed among you might see a ship at the end of the plaza here. And you wouldn’t be wrong!

The Minghua is now landlocked. She was cruise liner and prior to that she was French. MV Ancerville 1962-73. A quick Wikipedia search shows that this ship had quite a life before coming to Shekou in 1983. Initially she travelled between Marseille and Dakar, and then she brought passengers back from Rio but during this journey she was sold to a Chinese shipping company and never made it back to Marseille. She docked in Tenerife and her passengers were flown home while she went to be checked out at a dry dock inspection. She was renamed Minghua which apparently means “Spirit of China”. She then did a stint of China to Dar Es Salaam providing workers to service the construction of a railway. She has also been used as a refugee ship (though wiki tells me that it didn’t work) and as a tool to cruise round Japan on a friendship mission between the Chinese Government and Japanese Government in May 1979. Finally she was a cruise liner out of Australia cruising around – there she did 70 cruises. Anyway – the ship in Shekou was a hotel latterly with 110 rooms but it certainly hasn’t been open for a while and now part of her history will be closing during Covid. I wonder whether she will reopen again.

As mentioned, Shenzhen doesn’t just have Shekou and on Saturday night which was also my birthday, I was taken away to Futian for the night. Afternoon tea at The Langham followed by dinner and cocktails at a place called The Magpie in OCT Loft. OCT Loft was buzzing with activity and there were a lot of restaurants we passed that would have been great. But The Magpie, run by a guy called Cadence, barrel ages his own cocktails and on a Sunday does brunch with free flow cocktails. Saturday evening is a little more restrained but the menu has a bunch of cocktails under the title of “Unwise Decisions” you can’t say you weren’t warned. Erin, Peter, Martin and I shared a couple of starters and a platter of lamb with naan bread and hummus and other dips. It was all delicious. I have no picture of the lamb! The desserts when offered, Cadence wanted to know if we wanted them “Slutty or “Very Slutty”. These desserts were superb. The mousses were light, the handmade marshmallows fluffy.

And then we left Magpie and onto my very first Jazz Club.

Shenzhen will be a place that could easily haemorrhage money but with us being sensible we can have a lot of fun while trying not to be too bad with money.

And with the talk of money, I now have a new bank account which of course wasn’t an easy thing. Well actually the opening of the account took about 45 minutes and you get your bank card immediately but of course I caused a few issues by using a phone number that is in Martin’s name and not my own. Because I no longer have the use of my phone number I used in Suzhou. Turns out if you don’t use it or top it up with money it expires after 60 days. Now Martin did tell me to keep using it but of course I didn’t follow that advice. However all sorted as is the Tax App.

We had a trip to the tax office and arrived while everyone was still having their afternoon snooze. At 2pm all the lights were turned on and Martin and I were the first to get our tax numbers – though I may have caused a few problems there too, since I have worked in China but not since January!

Shekou is a bit like downtown old Suzhou, only livelier and more Western.