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> Shenzhen is one of world's most livable cities already, a head above of Silicon Valley

Why do you claim so? I’ve never been to SZ, but if it’s anything like Guangzhou or even Hong Kong, I don’t see how the quality of life there is obviously better than Silicon Valley, especially if you are into outdoor activities and dislike heat and humidity.

Or so you mean SZ has much better traffic than SV? Even that I would doubt. Better air quality? SZ is good for China, probably worse than SV. So what are the metrics for “most livable city?”

> A senior engineering cadre nets 25k-30k CNY per month. Cost of living, 7.5k CNY for a bachelor, even if you party hard.

Those numbers are laughable even for Beijing, I hear SZ is way more expensive still. 30k/month is junior engineer territory, and you are lucky if your one bedroom apartment is only 7500/month in rent.

I'm curious how havibg never been you find tg the numbers "laughable"? 7500/month is at the high end of the scale.

I’m using my experience living in Beijing as a basis where Shenzhen is known to be more expensive than Beijing when it comes to rent.

I guess you could go lower end, something much more decrepit should be 3-5k/month (think pre boom apartment buildings). However, this would chip away at ones sanity and I don’t recommend it for a westerner. Also, most of SZ’s housing stock is much newer in Beijing, so you won’t find that low end as accessible. Instead you probably have to move way out into the suburbs to find rent that cheap.

I now spend 4200 + utilities for a one-bedroom apartment in not a very old building (definitely not older than 20 years). Taking subway to all the central areas takes around 30 minutes. I guess Beijing prices are much higher.

How many sqm? To get that price in Beijing I would have to be outside the 4th ring road at least, or in some box with a concrete floor and white/blue lighting.

50 sq meters

Wow. That is definitely a studio. At the tier I was looking at, I never saw anything under 70, the smallest place I rented was 78sqm.

But it's not a studio. Bedroom, living room and kitchen are separate.

Ok, then just a very small 1 bedroom.

7.5k for a bachelor is not enough for a bachelor partying hard. Paying 5k for a 60 square meter 1 bedroom apartment right now in Shekou in Shenzhen, and that's on the cheap end of the scale without living way out in the boonies; searched long and hard for this deal.

That would leave me 2.5k for other expenses per month. That's about 83 RMB per day? Yeah, I think I could do that if I have zero partying and ate only the cheapest food each day. baybal2's numbers are way off. Many people do this, but many of them are doing it because they're not making nice engineer salaries. The ones I know and meet seem to like the finer things in life.

I live in north Nanshan and spend about that much per day on food and I am not very frugal and don't cook myself. If you want the cheapest food it would be about 15 rmb per meal or less, so 83 rmb per day is a very decent ration, unless you only eat western food of course.

By the way, is that '9 out 10 white people you see in factory districts speak Russian' true?

Not sure about "factory" districts, but overall there is a lot of Russians, Ukrainians and Serbs here.

It's always personal preference how much you spend on food. But even cooking for yourself can be expensive. My wife bought a portion of shrimp to cook lunch, the shrimp alone cost 40 RMB, and that was from a local grocery (big shrimp admittedly).

There are very few Chinese restaurants these days that charge only 15 RMB for a meal, depending on where you are in Shenzhen. Only hole in the wall shops, which are few and far between in most high tech parks. With waimai delivery, minimum cost 20 RMB for a nourishing meal, usually 30. Yes, life is feasible, I'm doing it.

But my main contention is that someone with 7.5k take-home pay can party hard. Don't think so. Unless party hard means watching movies all night on one's phone. Even a high-quality pearl milk tea will cost 30 RMB. Most Chinese (not western) restaurants that my wife and I visit now and then have a final bill of 100 to 200 RMB.

> Those numbers are laughable even for Beijing, I hear SZ is way more expensive still. 30k/month is junior engineer territory, and you are lucky if your one bedroom apartment is only 7500/month in rent.

In Beijing, junior engineer typically earn 17k-21k and that's before tax. His numbers seems quite right from my experience

In computer science coming from a tier one or even a tier two university? Sounds really low from what I know about the market.

>Or so you mean SZ has much better traffic than SV?

Yes, whoever is a city planner here, he is genius.

>Better air quality?

Yes, for simple reason that prevailing winds come from the sea

>outdoor activities

Every sporting event you can imagine, thanks to all things left over from universiade, and there is Da Peng peninsula, Zhuhai, and lots of greenery. If you don't mind getting malaria, and be bitten by monkeys, you can brave nearby hiking venues.

>dislike heat and humidity.

+30 is quite livable by my standards, and I spent almost half of my life in East Russia and *stans

30k is the junior engineer territory if you compare it with standards of Western run companies.

Here, a local without English gets so much in a company having nothing to do with dot com business

And yeah, the weather is totally fabulous around this time of year

In the US, you can get an APEC card as a checkbox with Global Entry. During the interview the agent had never heard of APEC before but I got it, and it has a very low sequence number.

It’s great using the diplomat line throughout Asia.

> APEC card works as a universal visa, but god know how one gets it. Last time I applied, the chamber of commerce said it is first time they heard of it.

The US (and Canada) APEC card isn't very useful because it doesn't work as a universal visa, since the US (and Canada) wasn't willing to reciprocate and honor other APEC cards as visas.

“livable cities already, a head above of Silicon Valley”

You are kidding me. What are you smoking?

Safe uncancerous air: SV

Safe water: SV

Safe food: SV

Safe medicine: SV

Freedom: SV

Nature: SV

Education: SV

Healthcare quality: SV

Salary: SV (10x-20x)

Food: SV (China has Chinese food and not much else. Most of the time you are stuck eating hot pot. There is pretty good food from China in SV)

Food diversity is much better in China these days. Last time I was in GZ, I had a lot of options (Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc....). Also, cheaper of course. (Again, I’ve never been to SZ before, but I assume it’s at least as good as GZ).

I am talking about GOOD food. Anybody in the world can make burgers, hummus, and tacos. But is it authentic and delicious? Not in China

In my experience it’s as good as SV, sometimes a bit better, sometimes a bit worse. Nothing like Tokyo, but SV is a much lower bar.

It’s not unless you’re just comparing Chinese food. The only thing consistently better is price

The valley is a low bar though. Pho isn’t going to be better in SV for some reason, and a first tier has plenty of mid-high end Japanese options (eg Hatsune’s) that you won’t find in the valley without looking really hard. Even high-end hamburgers in China often taste better than the states because they are using Japanese and Australian recipes (beetroot and egg work on a burger).

No, Asian food isn't going to be much better. It's the Western food that is by a lot.

I doubt that, having lived in the bay area and Beijing. The western food available in the latter was much better.

Shenzhen is a notch above Beijing, so I doubt it would be any worse.

I love to talk crap about Shenzhen as much as the next person but you’re talking out of your arse. The food in Shanghai and in Hong Kong is amazing even if the selection of foreign cuisines is limited. Cantonese food is absolutely amazing and local to Shenzhen. You’re also not going to have trouble finding food from anyplace else in China in a city that’s well over 90% immigrants from other parts of China. Sichuan food, Yunnan food, Jiangnan, Northern, Xinjiang, Manchurian. Chinese food is amazing all by itself. You can find Japanese food in any Tier 1 city in China even if the quality is hit and miss, ditto Italian or French.

I am sorry but SZ is not one of world’s most livable cities. Not even close. Have you ever lived in Palo Alto? It’s insanely convenient and I don’t have to bump into people every three feet. Almost everyone will prefer to live in the US over China at least until the communist regime fails. It is also becoming easier to live in rural America (or else where in developed countries).

> Almost everyone will prefer to live in the US over China

Look at per cent of Chinese students staying in US after graduation. It's not that big, considering the student visa to working visa is the easiest legal way into US.

It's huge considering the difficulty--assuming you're talking long term and not just short term OPT.

Student visa to H-1B is difficult even for a software engineers. Outside of software engineering, it's much more difficult without a PhD or a high demand masters.

For the vast majority of graduates an H-1B is the only real option and there are only 85k of those given out per year total.

> Student visa to H-1B is difficult

Comparing to? There is no easy legal way into US (if we consider the 'marriage to stay' not legal as we should).

By the way, many other factors are there, from Chinese patriotism to cultural differences, students demographics and American colleges business on foreign students. It's understandable from American perspective to be sure US is the best place on Earth though. But reality is more complicated.

> One 2016 survey of nearly 1,000 Chinese students studying at Purdue University – a large public college in rural Indiana – found that 29 per cent reported developing a more negative attitude toward the US since their arrival.

> Forty-four per cent said their attitude toward China had become more positive since coming to the US.

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/arti...

>Comparing to? There is no easy legal way into US

That's the point. There is no easy legal way to become a permanent resident. There are far more Chinese students who want to stay than can, so your evidence doesn't support your claim.

> One 2016 survey of nearly 1,000 Chinese students studying at Purdue University – a large public college in rural Indiana – found that 29 per cent reported developing a more negative attitude toward the US since their arrival.

And a statistically equal amount developed a more positive attitude. I'm not sure what a survey of 1000 Chinese students at a random college is supposed to prove. Students who are willing to travel to the other side of the world are more likely to hold an unrealistically optimistic view of the US before coming here, so it's expected that some percentage of them will have to reconcile fantasy with reality.

> Forty-four per cent said their attitude toward China had become more positive since coming to the US.

Rosy retrospection [1]. People have a tendency to judge the past more positively than the present. If you asked those students the opposite question after living back in China for several years, you'd likely get a similar result with respect to the US.

>It's understandable from American perspective to be sure US is the best place on Earth though.

I can think of several other places that are better in terms of quality-of-life for the average person. China isn't one of them.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection

I believe this is more a general indication of Chinese students' inability to find acceptable jobs more than their desire to stay in the US. Even for the perceived prestige of adding a significant work experience abroad, most international students will choose to work at least a couple of years here in the states. This is of course not true if you were lucky enough to be sponsored by a gov't agency or corporation.