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Comment by jordache | Hacker News Reader

it may look cool from far away, like a skyline shot, all lit up. However at micro level, streets in China (especially newly developed) are entirely indiscernible and total lack of character.

If you watch any of the driving in China videos on youtube, you'll see that streets are lined with shops and sidewalks that are sterile and look identical block after block...

There are exceptions of course, city squares, etc, are largely unique from one another.. but once you get into the urban residential and shopping districts, they mostly are all identical

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That's funny. All my Chinese relatives say the same thing about Europe. Once you have seen a European city, they are all the same.

In contrast, they think China is diverse.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity

They have a point. As an American, I found Switzerland to be a bit more diverse than Beijing, having lived in both.

The big problem is Chinese brick and mortar retail is so dysfunctional, and it will never be fixed since online shopping has easily solved that problem around it.

As an European, I also think that European cities are depressingly similar :|

I wonder how this is any different in any other places?

For example in the USA, iconic places like LA, Miami and Chicago also are extremely boring and and look similar street by street. Especially LA. After hearing the hype for about 3 decades visitors will just realize it's extremely large ghetto connected with 8 lane highways.

Haven't been in Shenzhen myself but I used to live in Shanghai and visited Beijing and Suzhou often, all of which were really interesting places and didn't "lack character".

This was exactly my impression of LA when I visited for the first time last month. A city that peaked 50+ years ago (though, to be fair, that can be said about many American cities).

Well.. I am guessing that there is a high degree of similarity for newly developed urban residential and shopping districts across the globe. I certainly noticed that new strip malls and housing developments in Texas looked quite similar to the new strip malls and housing developments in California.

"Identical" seems a bit too strong of a word though, especially considering there are 160 Chinese cities with more than 1 million people, and 3.7 million square miles in the country. There must be some places where streets are not generally identical and totally lacking character.

you are talking non-sense.

For example, in Shanghai, you can find Art deco, Shikumen, Soviet style and modem buildings everywhere. You simply can not find such a similar mixture in other places. If that is not considered as "character", then you need to seriously consider what do you mean by "character".

reading comprehension? did you read what I stated about exceptions?

Get out of the touristy areas, and everywhere in china, crap starts to look the same...

I always thought the little shops on the street were interesting when I first moved to china, but it got monotonous later. Heck, shopping malls are much worse, there is very little diversity in Chinese brick and mortar retail. It was bad enough that I would just do most of my shopping on trips back to the states.

This is SO true. I live in Hong Kong and whenever I go to Shenzhen I feel like the city is a copy paste of a single street, for kilometers. It feels empty and awkward.

HK's favourite hobby is Shenzhen bashing. My retort would be: at least Shenzhen residents don't need government housing support!

Which areas have you been? There's actually a lot of variation across the city, but single districts tend to be fairly similar. For example, Luowu is old and crowded, and quite built up. Futian is car-oriented, with wide roads and a commercial focus in most areas, but also a cultural area. Huaqiangbei area has huge malls, tech, but also parks and gardens. Nanshan has a lot of tech companies and universities, but also some lovely green areas. Shekou is another old area but with a glitzy mall zone as well. Houhai is a huge mall area with a theater and open public space. Qianhai is an emerging financial district with lots of apartments and westerly water views. There are numerous mountains across the city, many of which have nice streets and parks nestled against them. Then there is the semi-industrial Bao'an district, a lot of waterfront parks, beaches out to the east, etc. It's pretty varied I'd say. Perhaps you just haven't seen enough of it?

Lived 3 years in Shenzhen, and 2 years in HK. Now I live in Shanghai. From my perspective, what the grandparent said about Shenzhen is very true. You just can't compare "green areas" in Shenzhen (Wutong mt? Meilin? What else?) to the enormous and amazing network of country trails like MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong. Is it also incredibly diverse, you can walk around posh Central, then hop on a ferry to Lamma or Cheung Chau and be on a beach in 20 minutes. Come back and walk 20 minutes up to SoHo/PoHo area, walk through Lan Kwai Fong and climb the Mid-level Escalators (amazing by itself) up, walk the Bowen road through the beautiful greenery and descend into hectic Causeway Bay area. Hong Kong is endless and people are actually interesting and open. Shenzhen is one giant construction site where people just work, gorge on food, and shop. Absolutely soulless.

"Absolutely soulless"? How do you define soul? The middle of HK is the world's densest collection of enormous banks, paper-shufflers and finance types, with some desertified malls and generic retail. Granted, for geographic reasons Shenzhen doesn't have HK's network of (historically established, precipitous, mountainous) national parks, but Shanghai has no nature at all. Last time I visited HK they had ripped out the art museum, the one decent cultural attraction.

Yes, I agree with you. Shanghai is very far from being my favorite place on Earth, but for other reasons I am here, and from pure architectural and cultural points of view, it is way above most Chinese cities. Hong Kong, on the other side, becoming more and more China-fied. That's partly a reason why I left. My friends who stayed there all agree it's getting worse with every year. Though there is still much to see and do there, and amount of open clubs for any kind of interests from MTB to cross-stitching is staggering.

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