18 ms·

The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen (2016) [pdf]

485 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

eindiran 7y ago
Can anyone who has been to an electronics market in Shenzhen (or visited Shenzhen in general) comment on what their experience was like?
- daoistmonk 7y ago
  awesome!
- nippoo 7y ago
  I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written more about it (https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronic-market https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqia... is the classic article) but if you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.
  - lazyguy2 7y ago
    It's amazing that you had to go to China to get a idea of how Capitalism should actually work. Freed markets for the win.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - forinti 7y ago
    Meanwhile, in my town (pop 1.4 million in South America) nobody can fix anything anymore and the electronics shops are turning into lighting or computer stores. I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      The same thing happened to Radioshack[0] in North America. Then it became The Source[1] in Canada. You can still get some parts at The Source these days, but not all of them, and not nearly as expansive a selection. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack [1] https://www.thesource.ca/ https://www.thesource.ca/
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        To be clear, Radioshack and Circuit City were two distinct companies in the US. From a cursory look at Wikipedia, Circuit City was liquidated in 2009 (and later revived), and Radioshack is still operating stores.
        kup0 7y ago
        Radioshack is still around, but has scaled back extremely. From thousands of operating stores to 500. Had a few in our area all close, so instead of 2-3 miles, now requires 20 miles to get to one. Effectively to some towns/cities it feels like Radioshack is no more because of such a drastic hit to their footprint.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        52-6F-62 7y ago
        Yeah—that Wikipedia link goes into the more complex history. I just remember the RadioShack near my hometown that was full of walls of components. Now you're lucky to find a blank F-connector at The Source in the largest city in the country. Sentimentality got to me. That said—for other Torontonians, or visitors, there's an awesome (edit: AWESOME) shop on College St between Spadina and Bathurst called Creatron: https://www.creatroninc.com/ https://www.creatroninc.com/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
  - LiquidSky 7y ago
    This sounds like descriptions I've read of what Akihabara in Tokyo used to be like before it transformed into its current state as the anime otaku Mecca. There's still a small electronics market area there but it's hard to imagine what it once was with everything else so changed around it.
    - stoicShell 7y ago
      That was my thought as well. I went to Akihabara in 1997 and it was still glorious. Evidently that spirit has now moved to Shenzhen.
  - markus_zhang 7y ago
    Damn sounds like the dream place from a cyberpunk era
  - userbinator 7y ago
    my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour) One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more interactive the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too. It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      And the Western approach is to replace the board that’s faulty rather than the part or two that causes 99% of the failures of that board. We could only pray that the western repair shop sends the board somewhere for refurbishment.
      - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
        It's a labor cost. As hardware becomes more all-in-one, your cost of labor for knowledge of desoldering a single piece becomes more and more. Noone wants 'repaired goods' in the US.
        Scoundreller 7y ago
        Sort of. I feel like it’s a technical education thing. The fellow in Shenzhen is probably getting paid hundreds of dollars per month. (Just a guess, I know SZ is expensive, but has lots of labour coming from outer lying areas). Even if it cost 10x labour for the procedure of turning a 16gb iPhone into a 128gb, it would be worth it. But I don’t think you could train the average Western worker to become a BGA solder worker and reflasher and have them work for you for more than 6 months before racing to a higher paying job.
  - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
    > my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage How does this work? I’d have thought those flash chips would be something customised specifically for Apple and contain some kind of authentication system or preprogrammed ROM with immutable firmware - or at least have the IMEI number burned into it somewhere - surely there’s some mechanism for an iPhone to detect unofficial (or unofficially installed) storage chips and prevent booting? Are they sourcing actual Apple chips that get leaked or diverted out of Apple’s presumably locked-down supply-chain?
    - userbinator 7y ago
      At least for the older models, they used standard flash chips (eMMC?) --- there wouldn't have been official Apple models with that large of a capacity at the time anyway.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I don't think there is much to customise in a flash chip. There comes a point where a part is so basic and integral to the device that putting these kind of protections is outright impossible - without them the phone might not exist as a computing device.
- bllguo 7y ago
  the electronics markets are overwhelming in size and quantity. imo either try to have an idea of what you're looking for, or be prepared to spend a few days to absorb it all. don't get me wrong, that's my idea of fun, but it might not be for your companions. i did find it hard to get used to the vendors. the shops are very small and you will be aggressively approached by the staff, which I found irritating. do also be prepared to haggle. shenzhen itself is not that interesting otherwise. Because it is so new and because it is a city of transplants, you can tell there is not much unique culture. There are plenty of more fascinating places to explore in the PRD though; Guangzhou is a treasure
  - svachalek 7y ago
    This is similar to my experience a few years ago. Wasn't as fun as I expected it to be due to (1) language barrier (I do understand kindergarten-level Mandarin, but technology is another world) (2) it's overwhelming on multiple levels and (3) as an obvious foreigner many of the vendors aggressively latched onto me as a bulk purchaser for overseas business, which led to nothing but frustration on both sides. Shenzhen itself kinda feels like Blade Runner at night. I dig it in small doses. And I haven't been anywhere in China where people have as much patience for horrible laowai Mandarin skills so it's probably a good place to learn the language. Guangzhou is lovely though. Hope I can make it back there someday.
  - lvturner 7y ago
    I find Shenzhen fascinating because it IS a city of transplants and migrants - there's even a saying that sums it up quite nicely, roughly translated: If you live in Shenzhen, you're from Shenzhen. Another I saw on the side of a building was "One drink for home, another for Shenzhen" One thing everyone seems to fail to mention when talking about Shenzhen is that you can do incredible food tours of all of China just by walking down the street - the place is jammed full of reasonably authentic regional food places. I do generally agree that it's probably a bit dull for 'tourist' activities, but it ranks highly in my 'cities to generally hang about in' list!
- weknowbetter 7y ago
  If this is something you're curious about I highly recommend the YouTube channel Strange Parts. One of their most popular videos features their host building an iPhone from parts sourced in the markets of Shenzhen. https://youtu.be/aQszF2iKhx0 https://youtu.be/aQszF2iKhx0
  - nataz 7y ago
    This guy knows what he is talking about. Strange parts is a fascinating watch. The classic videos are him building an iPhone from components, and then modding it to have extra features like a headphone jack. He also has done some factory tours, and recently did a series where he went to Akihabara in Japan. Great series. I found him on YouTube after reading bunnies blog but wanting more. If this kind of stuff interests you, I also recommend YouTubers like tronicsfix. He'll buy batches of broken electronics (20 switches in the link below) troubleshoot, and repair then. None of the stuff strange parts and tronicfix is doing is particularly difficult. I think my enjoyment of these stems from the mental shift I've experienced of not treating electronics as consumables. Normally, if I had a switch and it stopped working out of warranty, I'd probably toss it. Now, I might break out the meter and test the video chip (or other components) and see if I could replace it. Yay for learning new things. https://youtu.be/EP65185uGiA https://youtu.be/EP65185uGiA
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    Definitely just spent more than an hour running through his videos. Thanks. I've been avoiding China for a visit, but now I need to check it out after watching those.
- baybal2 7y ago
  I've been in an out of the city on work assignments for the last 12 years. Markets were great up until 10 years ago, not so much now. The HQB was like 6-7 times bigger its current size in city blocks, and there were still functioning factories there. People who come to Shenzhen today, and see HQB for the first time still loose strength in their legs from the scale. My impression from life in the city... Hard to describe. The city's last 15 years were bizarre, speaking lightly. It's eclectic to the extreme. The city simple doesn't feel like China at all, nor like anything else in the world. Even Hongkong feels to be more like a Chinese city than Shenzhen to me. I think the only comparison I can come up with will be... Dubai. People come with different epithets for it, I think the most original one I heard was it being an "alien colony." Without any doubt, it's one of the best cities to live in Asia, and it beast Shanghai and Beijing hands down on quality of life now. But just 10 years ago people were calling it a hellhole. Back in 2009, I went to an observation deck on the SEG tower. I saw factories and dorms from horizon to horizon. Now the architecture feels indeed much more like Dubai, with half of the city area being rebuilt since then. We have extremely good, world class urban planning. Shenzhen is one of a very few cities in China with own independent urban planning office. Those guys, city planners, indeed have genuine authority on that, and they did overrule local party officials and the mayor's office a number of times in the past. Infrastructure is great. Despite of population of around 20 million, you don't feel it in daily life at all. The traffic is very light for the city of this size. The metro works great, except for rare pileups. The city spent more money on hosting the 2011 Universiade than most counties spend on entire Olympics. Yet, it went completely unnoticed outside of China. Even inside of China itself it was barely noted. Everybody credit the city for being a manufacturing supergiant now, yet few people know that the manufacturing has been in great decline through the decade. Today's Shenzhen manufacturing output is like 1/3 of what it was during its peak in 2010. In my entire life, I only met 5 Shenzhen natives. Though there are a lot of people who were there for 20+ years. The city, and especially Baoan had terrible crime statistics in the past, but now it is one of the safest one in China. The peace however only came at the price of putting a policeman every 100 metres. The city had next no no nightlife just a year ago, and it is common for all kinds of entertainment establishments to close very early. Even designated "night market" areas work at most until 20:00 at weekends. This is probably a legacy from times when street crime was rife, second to it being a "working man's city" The demographics of the city is equally eclectic. You meet of people from all over the region, yet by Chinese standards locals are not counted as "high end." Lots of people who came here as labourers, with just vocational school diploma in the pocket. There are very few people here who can speak English, much less than in Shanghai or Beijing. The city is still very international, but with most of foreigners being out of the Sinosphere. There some illegal migrants who spill over here from Guangzhou. 10 years ago, nearly all foreigners in the city were either engineers from less well off places in Eastern Europe, or people in the sourcing business from the West. Now, there is kinds of a demographic reversal. Lots of weird drifters from the West, and more permanent migrants from the East.
- rb808 7y ago
  The back half of this bloomberg video has hardware startup guys going to the market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  I visited basically every weekend over a 5 month period in 2013. My ex-girlfriend was working in finance there, and whenever I wasn't going on dates, I'd go and visit the electronics shops. Huaqiangbei is the largest of its kind, without a doubt. There's areas designated to each kind of component, device, or service. I didn't know that it was possible to upgrade the capacity of an iPhone (by de-soldering flash memory chips and reprogramming firmware), but there are some very talented people in Shenzhen who do just that. Wandering around helped me to get an idea of what was available. Sitting on the metro gave me time to reflect, and type up notes on my phone about different connectors. I compared voltages, imagined adaptors, and then went and bought them or built them. Although it didn't start (or end) there, my pockets grew significantly thanks to Huaqingbei. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 By comparison, when I went to Akihabara in 2012, it was a lot cleaner and tidier, but more expensive and somewhat smaller. Taipei has Guanghua, which isn't bad either, but most of the shops are just in one mall. Kaohsiung has 2 streets (Changmingjie and Jianguolu) for components and finished products, respectively. What I found to be most useful was checking Taobao beforehand, and sending messages to sellers using Aliwangwang or WeChat. Then I could get the address, go to their store, test it, and pick it up in person. I used offline maps and GPS coordinates to be certain about addresses, and YouLing (my own app) for instant translation. Now WeChat's translator is probably good enough. What I'd like to know about modern Shenzhen is how the cashless society has affected sales. Does everyone use Alipay?
  - showbufire 7y ago
    Either Alipay or WechatPay, most of the time. Cash is allowed as well.
    - peterburkimsher 7y ago
      Could you suggest how to use Alipay or WechatPay as a foreigner without a local bank account? Things like city bikes are great and very convenient. In Kaohsiung it used docking stations and a metro card. From what I hear, in China they are dockless, and use mobile apps (which means an expensive roaming data plan) and Chinese payments. These may be convenient for locals, but very user-unfriendly to foreigners. Locals probably have their routine figured out, whereas foreigners are probably going to visit new places, and will therefore use bicycles more.
- nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
  Shenzhen in general is a relatively boring modern city because of it's recent growth. There is certainly plenty to do, and lots of electronics in general, but I wouldn't visit specifically as a tourist. If you speak Mandarin well it's probably a bit more interesting, but then why not go to Shanghai. The market is really something. It's organized into different buildings roughly by sub-category of electronics and level of integration. It's almost like a mall, but with small booth-style vendors and a fair number of separate buildings in a small district. A lot of the booths represent much larger companies and they only have a sample of their stock available at the market. One building might have all low-cost consumer electronics devices. Flashlights, bluetooth speakers, etc. The larger vendors are primarily looking for a buyer to brand or resell their devices in volume, but you can buy singles as well. Many 'knock-off' products here, like a fake Beats Pill speaker. Another building might have entirely connectors. One floor will be RF connectors, another will be standard PC connectors (PCIe, HDMI, etc). Another building might have all LED lighting products. The first floor might be completed lighting fixtures: LED street lights, ceiling lights, replacement bulbs. The next floor might have LED modules, power supplies, strip lights, and drivers. Another floor might have individual LEDs on tape-and-reel. Most people speak a fairly limited amount of English, so communication is a combination of pointing and pen/paper or calculator for pricing and haggling. Payment is mostly cash for westerners. Carry a reasonable stack of 100 RMB bills. It's certainly an interesting experience. For hardware engineers or 'makers', it's certainly worth going if you're in Shenzhen or Hong Kong and have the appropriate visa. I haven't found a ton of use for actually buying things at the market because most components are not very well specified or tested. Standard RF connectors, LED products for one-off builds, or fun laser projectors are a good buy. I avoid ICs and batteries for the most part, or any unusual connectors. Passives are usually cheap enough on Digikey I prefer the reliable supply to measuring lead pitch or hoping the stated tolerance is accurate. [edit] Someone else mentioned cash isn't as useful anymore, so maybe disregard that. I haven't been in 3 years, most of my work is near Shanghai these days.
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    Good point about visas! I'd like to add that when I went, I had difficulty getting a visa from the Chinese Embassy in Hong Kong. (I'd already used 30 days x2 entries, and I wasn't a Hong Kong resident). Instead, I went to Forever Bright, a visa agent who take passports over to Shenzhen PSB. Sure enough, they got me a 90 day single entry tourist visa with no more questions asked. It is also possible to get a visa on arrival for the Pearl River Delta area. That lets you visit for 5 days to do some shopping. (when I went I think it used to be 2 weeks). https://hktravelblog.com/china/how-to-get-shenzhen-visa-on-arrival/ https://hktravelblog.com/china/how-to-get-shenzhen-visa-on-a... There are areas outside Shenzhen city that are quite scenic, particularly little islands. But I agree, the city isn't for tourism unless electronics shopping is your kind of thing. I did go on dates there with my ex (message me if you want to know specific ideas), but it helped a lot that she was there to translate. The things that bothered me most when living there were the firewall (no Facebook) and going to church (I could only go to the church for foreigners that's based in an international school or the official government-run Three Self Movement, not a local house church). Another point about visiting the surrounding area is that people speak Cantonese. Shenzhen is special because everybody moved there from all over Greater China (yes, including Taiwan - there's something special about the Special Economic Zone so many companies are run by Taiwanese businessmen). So Shenzhen speaks Mandarin, but Zhongshan speaks Cantonese. Now for a shameless plug: if you want to try to learn Chinese, I wrote Pingtype to make the parallel Pinyin and word-by-word translation. I wrote it for and used it for daily Bible reading, which improved my vocabulary significantly. I still use it to process lyrics to sing along in church, though I'm not studying as hard now I don't live in a Chinese-speaking country. https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io
- jmwilson 7y ago
  There's certainly no place else like it. What some of the previous reportage ("What $50 buys you in Huaqiangbei") misses about what makes the place unique, is it's less about what you can buy there, and more about what you can make there. There are oddball consumer electronics for sale, but you can find them, or substitutes, almost anywhere. What isn't everywhere is access to components and their manufacturers. There are almost countless booths that will sell you whole reels or cut tape of components, trays of chips, display technologies in various sizes in quantities big or small ... the list goes on. Walking around, you'll see people are leaving the markets with armfuls of component reels headed off toward labs and factories elsewhere. Unless you live across town from Digikey or Mouser, there is no way you can get things that quickly for prototyping. The upper floors of the buildings are more occupied by reps from manufacturers or factories, so if there's something custom you want, there's someone you can talk to in person about it. On one hand, it's inspiring to see and take in. But for any complicated project, being able to manage ordering online and see exact part specs probably beats same-day access, when you have to schlep through the chaos to get it yourself. I have heard that things are moving in that direction in Shenzhen, and the concept of a central market is perhaps past its prime.
- gjkood 7y ago
  Any building in HQB is an example of "vertical integration". The ground floor sells the finished product, the top floor you can get all the components to make that product with all floors in between you can get some form of sub-assemblies in between the raw components and the finished product. It will blow your mind if you have never seen something like that before. The closest I have seen somthing similar before I visited Shenzhen was Sim Lim Square in Singapore which was just one or two buildings in total. I bought two copies of Bunnie's book before I left and learned some basic Mandarin before my trip there. Knowing numbers will take you a long way to doing some basic price negotiations but using/reading a calculator for price communication is also fine.
- bobjordan 7y ago
  Here is a link to a video tour of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, which I posted about six years ago on YouTube. It hasn’t changed much. https://youtu.be/C9YJBwD0geA https://youtu.be/C9YJBwD0geA
dang 7y ago
Discussed before it existed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369 A bit more from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bedah 7y ago
Great, thanks for the link :) I was looking for exactly this book in german book stores, but local bookstores here do not have books from No Starch Press in their program: https://nostarch.com/shenzhen https://nostarch.com/shenzhen I never buy anything from amazon, just my personal decision
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
_e 7y ago
In Chicago, there are many many very talented Chinese engineering students. Having two hard copies of this guide in the office has helped me recover from some miscommunications very quickly.
- hettygreen 7y ago
  Why two copies??
  - _e 7y ago
    Prevents a bottleneck with access to information.
yellow_lead 7y ago
In the introduction, they lightly recommend VPNs. I would recommend using a SOCKS5 proxy instead if you're in China and looking to get past the firewall. Shadowsocks is purpose built for this [1]. You can easily set it up on a droplet or vultr before you travel. If it gets blocked, changing the port number can usually suffice. [1] https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html
- wooptoo 7y ago
  Is this better than an SSH socks proxy?
  - k_sze 7y ago
    Yes because SSH is easily detectable using deep packet inspection and is usually blocked by the GFW; whereas Shadowsocks is (still?) hard to detect.
    - yellow_lead 7y ago
      Shadow socks is being detected today unfortunately but it takes a few days. There are many tricks that could be used to fool DPI, but not many options out there unfortunately. Good project idea for sure.
    - NamTaf 7y ago
      As of this August just gone, SS and Wireguard were my go-to options. I also had my parents use Wireguard about 2 months ago with no issues.
  - pathseeker 7y ago
    The great firewall picks up the traffic pattern of SSH tunneled socks and kills your connection within a couple of minutes.
- m0th87 7y ago
  You can also just use a phone plan with roaming, as they aren't affected by the firewall. The guide says it's pricey, but Google Fi doesn't charge extra for roaming. I got around China last year with it, including some fairly remote parts.
rmbryan 7y ago
More information from the dedication: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626
oneoff-acct 7y ago
I'm deeply unsettled by the economic relationship between China and the rest of the world, particularly with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear nations have tried at all costs to avoid arms races and armed conflict. However, war still happens, but on more subtle fronts. China is waging economic warfare in earnest: - Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters. - Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products. - Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs - Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T) At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state. I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering to what extent one should do business with China.
- yuy910616 7y ago
  It's kinda strange that these accounts are popping up all over the place to stoke fear on China. What's the agenda here I wonder? Chinese are known to pay folks to post on foreign forums. I'm not sure who is behind these...fascinating stuff
  - oneoff-acct 7y ago
    I'm a US citizen working at a tech company. I have a normal HN account with reputation above 2000. These are my own thoughts and opinions. I'm just honestly afraid of being targeted by Chinese hackers for posting sentiments like the above.
    - account73466 7y ago
      It is like to post something negative about LGBT and claim that you fear being attacked by their active members. China and Chinese don't give a XYZT about you. HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the war with Eastasia is in progress.
colanderman 7y ago
I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for those just casually interested in the topic. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware-hacker https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware...
jancsika 7y ago
Will any of the vendors give you source code and specs for the hardware?
wst_ 7y ago
I'm not that interested in the place and electronics per se but I've found the intro really interesting in terms of culture and language. Great read.
k_sze 7y ago
Even if the maps are outdated, I think the point-to-translate pages serve as a really nice, condensed English<->Chinese glossary of electronics. This helps not only foreigners, but also native Chinese like myself who have received their higher education in English. You see, I usually can’t hold a conversation about electronics or computer science in Chinese, even though my mother tongue is Cantonese and I’m generally fluent in Mandarin.
canada_dry 7y ago
Was fortunate to meet and spend some time with Andrew (Bunnie) a couple years ago. The guy is just a stellar nice person. Generally speaking he's usually the smartest guy in the room yet he's totally approachable and down-to-earth. One of his gifts is a Feynman-like ability to explain complex topics in a down-to-earth manner. If you get a chance to hear him speak/present, take it.
- anujdeshpande 7y ago
  Very similar experience at a recent conference. Love his blog, and writing in general as well
- shaklee3 7y ago
  I remember him from the original Xbox hacking. I believe he was the one that originally figured out how to load custom software on it, and maybe even got sued?
  - henriks 7y ago
    The book he wrote about this is freely downloadable these days at https://nostarch.com/xbox https://nostarch.com/xbox .
xiii1408 7y ago
This is extremely topical for me, as I'm visiting the Shenzhen electronics market for the first time today. :D My Chinese is okay, although I don't know any of the technical terms. Thanks for the reference! Looking forward to experiencing this firsthand.
baybal2 7y ago
Here is a nice video on the city: https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0 https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0
throwaway8282 7y ago
> I also hesitantly recommend installing Baidu maps. It’s basically malware, so uninstall it upon leaving China Anyone have more info about this? What does/can the app do with the permissions it has?
- hamhand 7y ago
  It agressively pushes all the other products Baidu has, like every other Chinese big app, but Baidu's reputation is especially bad, think about it as Baidu's Wechat super app. You can try Tencent Map. If you are using Android, then get ready being asked for all kinds of permissions as it's Chinese apps' tradition, some apps even outright refuse to run if you decline it.
FpUser 7y ago
This is my friend's story. He owns a company that designs and manufactures various electro-mechanical things. So he went there to check quality of his order that was getting ready for shipping. All went nice and shiny and then as he was about to head back to an airport he mentioned that he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. So the the owner said wait a min. Dials his buddy with another factory that happen to manufacture batteries and explains the task. So they set up the line and in 3 hours he had the whole amount made and put in crates. Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.
- unicornporn 7y ago
  > he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. Non-standard you say? Clever. Now the guy who sold him the electronics just made a whole bunch of money not only from your friend, but also from the a batteries buddy.
  - achow 7y ago
    > Now the guy who sold him the electronics just made a whole bunch of money not only from your friend, but also from the a batteries buddy. That is how things work, and nothing wrong with that. If not money then a favor got chalked up which would be reciprocated when it is called for.
  - FpUser 7y ago
    What's your point? This is how any business operates except some non taxable charity activities
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      This form of capitalism is anathema to those who consider the world rich enough, and therefore misunderstand that hard work is as much a part of capitalist wealth as anything else. Those 150,000 batteries didn't make themselves, and the guys who knew how to get it done in a few hours wouldn't be in that condition if they didn't earn the capital required to make it happen ..
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Excerpt (from page 19): Internet & Helpful Apps "As a general rule, the Internet as you know it is blocked in China. There’s no access to Google services, Facebook, Twitter, Imgur, YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Telegram, etc. etc. As a consolation, there’s Bing. Roaming data service will bypass the firewall since roaming phones are assigned an IP address from the home country of the subscriber’s carrier, but it’s an expensive option. Prices vary depending upon the carrier, but currently T-mobile offers one of the lowest cost international roaming data plans. A VPN is a cheaper way to get around the firewall, but depending upon the political climate even VPNs can be blocked. China’s firewall routers have the ability to do deep packet inspection and thus can automatically discover VPN connections running on unconventional ports or with other small modifications intended to bypass less sophisticated firewalls."
mysterypie 7y ago
Is there any way to visit Shenzhen without submitting your fingerprints to the Chinese government? I've heard that everyone gets their fingers scanned at entry these days even if you never had to submit fingerprints with your visa application. Is that correct?
- mlacks 7y ago
  I’ve been to China three time in the past three years; I’ve never had to be fingerprinted.
  - spats1990 7y ago
    Anecdata but I got fingerprinted just passing through Shanghai airport in transit at the end of 2018. I haven't visited the US or transited through a US airport but again anecdotally I've heard this happens there too (even in transit).
    - Tijdreiziger 7y ago
      I'm not sure about transit but when I (EU citizen) have been to the US they took all ten of my fingerprints, and this has also been the experience of my friends. (Incidentally, my own government doesn't even have any of my fingerprints...)
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        I wouldn't be so certain that your government does not have your fingerprint... if it's European you can bet that at least your secret services have it as part of "we spy on your citizens, you on ours" agreement.
        neuronic 7y ago
        Of course they do - at least in Germany. Your biometrics are part of your personal ID and passport. It is only thumb and index finger though plus facial scan / photo.
paulkrush 7y ago
I just went. It's really darn cool, but if I lived there I would still buy everything online, except the shipping would be faster! I can't believe how many e-bikes were there. Also when you go the sound of shipping tape is everywhere.
ecesena 7y ago
A list of (pretty awesome) projects from the same author/team: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi
plq 7y ago
> (...) And then there are the pronunciation subtleties, such as 芯片号, “xīn piàn hào” (which means an “IC’s part number” (literally “core flat item’s number”), which with misplaced accents sounds like 性偏好, “xìng piān hào” which means “sexual preference”. No native speaker would ever mispronounce or confuse the two, but a foreigner going up to a local asking “What’s your chip’s part number?” could be heard as “What’s your sexual preference?” if mispronounced and taken out of context. I love how every language out there is choke-full of these :) Though so far nothing beats the importance of punctuation in "Come on, people"[1] [1]: As heard in one of John oliver's episodes
- rladd 7y ago
  Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning "packed full".
  - plq 7y ago
    Pun unintentionally intended, then :) Thanks for the note.
nneonneo 7y ago
Oh, this is wonderful! I'm learning Chinese right now - conversationally capable, but I have no grasp on jargon (especially electronics). This is a great guide. There are some issues with the pinyin transliterations - they seem to be machine-generated rather than human-generated: there's some errors, like mixups between chang/zhang for 长, and weirdness like "yao yao ling" for 110 where we'd usually use "yi bai yi shi". But technically these wouldn't matter much in a point-and-translate context because neither party would be paying attention to the pinyin. Anyway, aside from that nit - I suspect I will be using part of it as a study guide for my Mandarin learning. Thanks, Bunnie!
- georgebaily 7y ago
  Yao yao ling is just what everyone says - it's a phone number. You don't read it as "one hundred and ten"
  - nneonneo 7y ago
    Ah, I’m sorry. I should have clarified further - I was referring to the transliteration of “110V” as “yao yao ling dian ya” - “one one zero volts”. In that instance the transliteration is incorrect as one would usually use “one hundred and ten” (yi bai yi shi).
- xster 7y ago
  That's like saying 911 (US equivalent of 110) should be "nine hundred and eleven" instead of "nine one one".
webboynews 7y ago
Anybody got a Chinese to English dictionary where more frequent meaning comes first? Cdict has this problem that lots of times some random obscure meanings are mentioned before popular meanings. (For example ，下去- go down is an irrelevant meaning and the first relevant meaning- continue is 3rd in the list)
- jonatron 7y ago
  Just googling "下去 continue" brought up https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8B%E5%8E%BB.html https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8... . Googling "chinese english dictionary common usage" brought up someone with the same complaint as you: http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-dictionaries.htm http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-dict...
  - webboynews 7y ago
    I appreciate your trying to figure out a solution to my problem. A sincere thanks.
betimsl 7y ago
There's a game on steam called SHENZHEN I/O. I think that if you finish that game and study this document, you can implement anything you want really :)
contingencies 7y ago
Actual hardware R&D focused business owner in the PRD here. 18 years China. IMHO the 'essential guide' is just buy stuff online: barely anyone actually physically visits stores anymore. Certain parties make money and cred by claiming being in physical proximity to a bunch of cables and parts in HQB is somehow awesome, and in a minority of cases walking around might save half a day, but really you can just order ahead or use your own stock if you have a clue which area you'll be working in, and you'll have saved 10x half a day in rent by not being there. Even if you buy stuff online many stores will give you their business card, WeChat or QQ account and you can just ask them to send stuff pronto on subsequent orders, cutting Taobao or whatever online platform out of the equation. Shenzhen is very expensive for real estate and salaries. If you want to go scrappy, live somewhere cheap in China (Yunnan is awesome) and use Taobao. If you want to go scrappy and fast, live somewhere cheap in the PRD and use Taobao. (There are minor electronics ecosystems around Xi'an, Chengdu, Zhejiang and Beijing, too.) No need to even visit Shenzhen, although outer Shenzhen / Dongguan is still a great place to acquire lots of types of industrial equipment, IMHO inner Shenzhen / HQB really just isn't anymore. Hardware startups should go somewhere cheap to iterate. The cheapest and cleanest well connected major area of the PRD is Zhuhai, where we moved from Shenzhen 1.5 years ago. I go back about once a month for outlying factories.

485 points by BerislavLopac 7y ago

Can anyone who has been to an electronics market in Shenzhen (or visited Shenzhen in general) comment on what their experience was like?

daoistmonk 7y ago
awesome!
nippoo 7y ago
I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written more about it (https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronic-market https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqia... is the classic article) but if you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.
- lazyguy2 7y ago
  It's amazing that you had to go to China to get a idea of how Capitalism should actually work. Freed markets for the win.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- forinti 7y ago
  Meanwhile, in my town (pop 1.4 million in South America) nobody can fix anything anymore and the electronics shops are turning into lighting or computer stores. I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    The same thing happened to Radioshack[0] in North America. Then it became The Source[1] in Canada. You can still get some parts at The Source these days, but not all of them, and not nearly as expansive a selection. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack [1] https://www.thesource.ca/ https://www.thesource.ca/
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      To be clear, Radioshack and Circuit City were two distinct companies in the US. From a cursory look at Wikipedia, Circuit City was liquidated in 2009 (and later revived), and Radioshack is still operating stores.
      - kup0 7y ago
        Radioshack is still around, but has scaled back extremely. From thousands of operating stores to 500. Had a few in our area all close, so instead of 2-3 miles, now requires 20 miles to get to one. Effectively to some towns/cities it feels like Radioshack is no more because of such a drastic hit to their footprint.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        Yeah—that Wikipedia link goes into the more complex history. I just remember the RadioShack near my hometown that was full of walls of components. Now you're lucky to find a blank F-connector at The Source in the largest city in the country. Sentimentality got to me. That said—for other Torontonians, or visitors, there's an awesome (edit: AWESOME) shop on College St between Spadina and Bathurst called Creatron: https://www.creatroninc.com/ https://www.creatroninc.com/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
- LiquidSky 7y ago
  This sounds like descriptions I've read of what Akihabara in Tokyo used to be like before it transformed into its current state as the anime otaku Mecca. There's still a small electronics market area there but it's hard to imagine what it once was with everything else so changed around it.
  - stoicShell 7y ago
    That was my thought as well. I went to Akihabara in 1997 and it was still glorious. Evidently that spirit has now moved to Shenzhen.
- markus_zhang 7y ago
  Damn sounds like the dream place from a cyberpunk era
- userbinator 7y ago
  my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour) One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more interactive the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too. It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    And the Western approach is to replace the board that’s faulty rather than the part or two that causes 99% of the failures of that board. We could only pray that the western repair shop sends the board somewhere for refurbishment.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
      It's a labor cost. As hardware becomes more all-in-one, your cost of labor for knowledge of desoldering a single piece becomes more and more. Noone wants 'repaired goods' in the US.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        Sort of. I feel like it’s a technical education thing. The fellow in Shenzhen is probably getting paid hundreds of dollars per month. (Just a guess, I know SZ is expensive, but has lots of labour coming from outer lying areas). Even if it cost 10x labour for the procedure of turning a 16gb iPhone into a 128gb, it would be worth it. But I don’t think you could train the average Western worker to become a BGA solder worker and reflasher and have them work for you for more than 6 months before racing to a higher paying job.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  > my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage How does this work? I’d have thought those flash chips would be something customised specifically for Apple and contain some kind of authentication system or preprogrammed ROM with immutable firmware - or at least have the IMEI number burned into it somewhere - surely there’s some mechanism for an iPhone to detect unofficial (or unofficially installed) storage chips and prevent booting? Are they sourcing actual Apple chips that get leaked or diverted out of Apple’s presumably locked-down supply-chain?
  - userbinator 7y ago
    At least for the older models, they used standard flash chips (eMMC?) --- there wouldn't have been official Apple models with that large of a capacity at the time anyway.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I don't think there is much to customise in a flash chip. There comes a point where a part is so basic and integral to the device that putting these kind of protections is outright impossible - without them the phone might not exist as a computing device.
bllguo 7y ago
the electronics markets are overwhelming in size and quantity. imo either try to have an idea of what you're looking for, or be prepared to spend a few days to absorb it all. don't get me wrong, that's my idea of fun, but it might not be for your companions. i did find it hard to get used to the vendors. the shops are very small and you will be aggressively approached by the staff, which I found irritating. do also be prepared to haggle. shenzhen itself is not that interesting otherwise. Because it is so new and because it is a city of transplants, you can tell there is not much unique culture. There are plenty of more fascinating places to explore in the PRD though; Guangzhou is a treasure
- svachalek 7y ago
  This is similar to my experience a few years ago. Wasn't as fun as I expected it to be due to (1) language barrier (I do understand kindergarten-level Mandarin, but technology is another world) (2) it's overwhelming on multiple levels and (3) as an obvious foreigner many of the vendors aggressively latched onto me as a bulk purchaser for overseas business, which led to nothing but frustration on both sides. Shenzhen itself kinda feels like Blade Runner at night. I dig it in small doses. And I haven't been anywhere in China where people have as much patience for horrible laowai Mandarin skills so it's probably a good place to learn the language. Guangzhou is lovely though. Hope I can make it back there someday.
- lvturner 7y ago
  I find Shenzhen fascinating because it IS a city of transplants and migrants - there's even a saying that sums it up quite nicely, roughly translated: If you live in Shenzhen, you're from Shenzhen. Another I saw on the side of a building was "One drink for home, another for Shenzhen" One thing everyone seems to fail to mention when talking about Shenzhen is that you can do incredible food tours of all of China just by walking down the street - the place is jammed full of reasonably authentic regional food places. I do generally agree that it's probably a bit dull for 'tourist' activities, but it ranks highly in my 'cities to generally hang about in' list!
weknowbetter 7y ago
If this is something you're curious about I highly recommend the YouTube channel Strange Parts. One of their most popular videos features their host building an iPhone from parts sourced in the markets of Shenzhen. https://youtu.be/aQszF2iKhx0 https://youtu.be/aQszF2iKhx0
- nataz 7y ago
  This guy knows what he is talking about. Strange parts is a fascinating watch. The classic videos are him building an iPhone from components, and then modding it to have extra features like a headphone jack. He also has done some factory tours, and recently did a series where he went to Akihabara in Japan. Great series. I found him on YouTube after reading bunnies blog but wanting more. If this kind of stuff interests you, I also recommend YouTubers like tronicsfix. He'll buy batches of broken electronics (20 switches in the link below) troubleshoot, and repair then. None of the stuff strange parts and tronicfix is doing is particularly difficult. I think my enjoyment of these stems from the mental shift I've experienced of not treating electronics as consumables. Normally, if I had a switch and it stopped working out of warranty, I'd probably toss it. Now, I might break out the meter and test the video chip (or other components) and see if I could replace it. Yay for learning new things. https://youtu.be/EP65185uGiA https://youtu.be/EP65185uGiA
- remarkEon 7y ago
  Definitely just spent more than an hour running through his videos. Thanks. I've been avoiding China for a visit, but now I need to check it out after watching those.
baybal2 7y ago
I've been in an out of the city on work assignments for the last 12 years. Markets were great up until 10 years ago, not so much now. The HQB was like 6-7 times bigger its current size in city blocks, and there were still functioning factories there. People who come to Shenzhen today, and see HQB for the first time still loose strength in their legs from the scale. My impression from life in the city... Hard to describe. The city's last 15 years were bizarre, speaking lightly. It's eclectic to the extreme. The city simple doesn't feel like China at all, nor like anything else in the world. Even Hongkong feels to be more like a Chinese city than Shenzhen to me. I think the only comparison I can come up with will be... Dubai. People come with different epithets for it, I think the most original one I heard was it being an "alien colony." Without any doubt, it's one of the best cities to live in Asia, and it beast Shanghai and Beijing hands down on quality of life now. But just 10 years ago people were calling it a hellhole. Back in 2009, I went to an observation deck on the SEG tower. I saw factories and dorms from horizon to horizon. Now the architecture feels indeed much more like Dubai, with half of the city area being rebuilt since then. We have extremely good, world class urban planning. Shenzhen is one of a very few cities in China with own independent urban planning office. Those guys, city planners, indeed have genuine authority on that, and they did overrule local party officials and the mayor's office a number of times in the past. Infrastructure is great. Despite of population of around 20 million, you don't feel it in daily life at all. The traffic is very light for the city of this size. The metro works great, except for rare pileups. The city spent more money on hosting the 2011 Universiade than most counties spend on entire Olympics. Yet, it went completely unnoticed outside of China. Even inside of China itself it was barely noted. Everybody credit the city for being a manufacturing supergiant now, yet few people know that the manufacturing has been in great decline through the decade. Today's Shenzhen manufacturing output is like 1/3 of what it was during its peak in 2010. In my entire life, I only met 5 Shenzhen natives. Though there are a lot of people who were there for 20+ years. The city, and especially Baoan had terrible crime statistics in the past, but now it is one of the safest one in China. The peace however only came at the price of putting a policeman every 100 metres. The city had next no no nightlife just a year ago, and it is common for all kinds of entertainment establishments to close very early. Even designated "night market" areas work at most until 20:00 at weekends. This is probably a legacy from times when street crime was rife, second to it being a "working man's city" The demographics of the city is equally eclectic. You meet of people from all over the region, yet by Chinese standards locals are not counted as "high end." Lots of people who came here as labourers, with just vocational school diploma in the pocket. There are very few people here who can speak English, much less than in Shanghai or Beijing. The city is still very international, but with most of foreigners being out of the Sinosphere. There some illegal migrants who spill over here from Guangzhou. 10 years ago, nearly all foreigners in the city were either engineers from less well off places in Eastern Europe, or people in the sourcing business from the West. Now, there is kinds of a demographic reversal. Lots of weird drifters from the West, and more permanent migrants from the East.
rb808 7y ago
The back half of this bloomberg video has hardware startup guys going to the market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLmaIbb13GM
peterburkimsher 7y ago
I visited basically every weekend over a 5 month period in 2013. My ex-girlfriend was working in finance there, and whenever I wasn't going on dates, I'd go and visit the electronics shops. Huaqiangbei is the largest of its kind, without a doubt. There's areas designated to each kind of component, device, or service. I didn't know that it was possible to upgrade the capacity of an iPhone (by de-soldering flash memory chips and reprogramming firmware), but there are some very talented people in Shenzhen who do just that. Wandering around helped me to get an idea of what was available. Sitting on the metro gave me time to reflect, and type up notes on my phone about different connectors. I compared voltages, imagined adaptors, and then went and bought them or built them. Although it didn't start (or end) there, my pockets grew significantly thanks to Huaqingbei. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21533819 By comparison, when I went to Akihabara in 2012, it was a lot cleaner and tidier, but more expensive and somewhat smaller. Taipei has Guanghua, which isn't bad either, but most of the shops are just in one mall. Kaohsiung has 2 streets (Changmingjie and Jianguolu) for components and finished products, respectively. What I found to be most useful was checking Taobao beforehand, and sending messages to sellers using Aliwangwang or WeChat. Then I could get the address, go to their store, test it, and pick it up in person. I used offline maps and GPS coordinates to be certain about addresses, and YouLing (my own app) for instant translation. Now WeChat's translator is probably good enough. What I'd like to know about modern Shenzhen is how the cashless society has affected sales. Does everyone use Alipay?
- showbufire 7y ago
  Either Alipay or WechatPay, most of the time. Cash is allowed as well.
  - peterburkimsher 7y ago
    Could you suggest how to use Alipay or WechatPay as a foreigner without a local bank account? Things like city bikes are great and very convenient. In Kaohsiung it used docking stations and a metro card. From what I hear, in China they are dockless, and use mobile apps (which means an expensive roaming data plan) and Chinese payments. These may be convenient for locals, but very user-unfriendly to foreigners. Locals probably have their routine figured out, whereas foreigners are probably going to visit new places, and will therefore use bicycles more.
nlfwhulsdhouv 7y ago
Shenzhen in general is a relatively boring modern city because of it's recent growth. There is certainly plenty to do, and lots of electronics in general, but I wouldn't visit specifically as a tourist. If you speak Mandarin well it's probably a bit more interesting, but then why not go to Shanghai. The market is really something. It's organized into different buildings roughly by sub-category of electronics and level of integration. It's almost like a mall, but with small booth-style vendors and a fair number of separate buildings in a small district. A lot of the booths represent much larger companies and they only have a sample of their stock available at the market. One building might have all low-cost consumer electronics devices. Flashlights, bluetooth speakers, etc. The larger vendors are primarily looking for a buyer to brand or resell their devices in volume, but you can buy singles as well. Many 'knock-off' products here, like a fake Beats Pill speaker. Another building might have entirely connectors. One floor will be RF connectors, another will be standard PC connectors (PCIe, HDMI, etc). Another building might have all LED lighting products. The first floor might be completed lighting fixtures: LED street lights, ceiling lights, replacement bulbs. The next floor might have LED modules, power supplies, strip lights, and drivers. Another floor might have individual LEDs on tape-and-reel. Most people speak a fairly limited amount of English, so communication is a combination of pointing and pen/paper or calculator for pricing and haggling. Payment is mostly cash for westerners. Carry a reasonable stack of 100 RMB bills. It's certainly an interesting experience. For hardware engineers or 'makers', it's certainly worth going if you're in Shenzhen or Hong Kong and have the appropriate visa. I haven't found a ton of use for actually buying things at the market because most components are not very well specified or tested. Standard RF connectors, LED products for one-off builds, or fun laser projectors are a good buy. I avoid ICs and batteries for the most part, or any unusual connectors. Passives are usually cheap enough on Digikey I prefer the reliable supply to measuring lead pitch or hoping the stated tolerance is accurate. [edit] Someone else mentioned cash isn't as useful anymore, so maybe disregard that. I haven't been in 3 years, most of my work is near Shanghai these days.
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Good point about visas! I'd like to add that when I went, I had difficulty getting a visa from the Chinese Embassy in Hong Kong. (I'd already used 30 days x2 entries, and I wasn't a Hong Kong resident). Instead, I went to Forever Bright, a visa agent who take passports over to Shenzhen PSB. Sure enough, they got me a 90 day single entry tourist visa with no more questions asked. It is also possible to get a visa on arrival for the Pearl River Delta area. That lets you visit for 5 days to do some shopping. (when I went I think it used to be 2 weeks). https://hktravelblog.com/china/how-to-get-shenzhen-visa-on-arrival/ https://hktravelblog.com/china/how-to-get-shenzhen-visa-on-a... There are areas outside Shenzhen city that are quite scenic, particularly little islands. But I agree, the city isn't for tourism unless electronics shopping is your kind of thing. I did go on dates there with my ex (message me if you want to know specific ideas), but it helped a lot that she was there to translate. The things that bothered me most when living there were the firewall (no Facebook) and going to church (I could only go to the church for foreigners that's based in an international school or the official government-run Three Self Movement, not a local house church). Another point about visiting the surrounding area is that people speak Cantonese. Shenzhen is special because everybody moved there from all over Greater China (yes, including Taiwan - there's something special about the Special Economic Zone so many companies are run by Taiwanese businessmen). So Shenzhen speaks Mandarin, but Zhongshan speaks Cantonese. Now for a shameless plug: if you want to try to learn Chinese, I wrote Pingtype to make the parallel Pinyin and word-by-word translation. I wrote it for and used it for daily Bible reading, which improved my vocabulary significantly. I still use it to process lyrics to sing along in church, though I'm not studying as hard now I don't live in a Chinese-speaking country. https://pingtype.github.io https://pingtype.github.io
jmwilson 7y ago
There's certainly no place else like it. What some of the previous reportage ("What $50 buys you in Huaqiangbei") misses about what makes the place unique, is it's less about what you can buy there, and more about what you can make there. There are oddball consumer electronics for sale, but you can find them, or substitutes, almost anywhere. What isn't everywhere is access to components and their manufacturers. There are almost countless booths that will sell you whole reels or cut tape of components, trays of chips, display technologies in various sizes in quantities big or small ... the list goes on. Walking around, you'll see people are leaving the markets with armfuls of component reels headed off toward labs and factories elsewhere. Unless you live across town from Digikey or Mouser, there is no way you can get things that quickly for prototyping. The upper floors of the buildings are more occupied by reps from manufacturers or factories, so if there's something custom you want, there's someone you can talk to in person about it. On one hand, it's inspiring to see and take in. But for any complicated project, being able to manage ordering online and see exact part specs probably beats same-day access, when you have to schlep through the chaos to get it yourself. I have heard that things are moving in that direction in Shenzhen, and the concept of a central market is perhaps past its prime.
gjkood 7y ago
Any building in HQB is an example of "vertical integration". The ground floor sells the finished product, the top floor you can get all the components to make that product with all floors in between you can get some form of sub-assemblies in between the raw components and the finished product. It will blow your mind if you have never seen something like that before. The closest I have seen somthing similar before I visited Shenzhen was Sim Lim Square in Singapore which was just one or two buildings in total. I bought two copies of Bunnie's book before I left and learned some basic Mandarin before my trip there. Knowing numbers will take you a long way to doing some basic price negotiations but using/reading a calculator for price communication is also fine.
bobjordan 7y ago
Here is a link to a video tour of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen, which I posted about six years ago on YouTube. It hasn’t changed much. https://youtu.be/C9YJBwD0geA https://youtu.be/C9YJBwD0geA

dang 7y ago

Discussed before it existed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369 A bit more from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bedah 7y ago

Great, thanks for the link :) I was looking for exactly this book in german book stores, but local bookstores here do not have books from No Starch Press in their program: https://nostarch.com/shenzhen https://nostarch.com/shenzhen I never buy anything from amazon, just my personal decision

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

_e 7y ago

In Chicago, there are many many very talented Chinese engineering students. Having two hard copies of this guide in the office has helped me recover from some miscommunications very quickly.

hettygreen 7y ago
Why two copies??
- _e 7y ago
  Prevents a bottleneck with access to information.

yellow_lead 7y ago

In the introduction, they lightly recommend VPNs. I would recommend using a SOCKS5 proxy instead if you're in China and looking to get past the firewall. Shadowsocks is purpose built for this [1]. You can easily set it up on a droplet or vultr before you travel. If it gets blocked, changing the port number can usually suffice. [1] https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html

wooptoo 7y ago
Is this better than an SSH socks proxy?
- k_sze 7y ago
  Yes because SSH is easily detectable using deep packet inspection and is usually blocked by the GFW; whereas Shadowsocks is (still?) hard to detect.
  - yellow_lead 7y ago
    Shadow socks is being detected today unfortunately but it takes a few days. There are many tricks that could be used to fool DPI, but not many options out there unfortunately. Good project idea for sure.
  - NamTaf 7y ago
    As of this August just gone, SS and Wireguard were my go-to options. I also had my parents use Wireguard about 2 months ago with no issues.
- pathseeker 7y ago
  The great firewall picks up the traffic pattern of SSH tunneled socks and kills your connection within a couple of minutes.
m0th87 7y ago
You can also just use a phone plan with roaming, as they aren't affected by the firewall. The guide says it's pricey, but Google Fi doesn't charge extra for roaming. I got around China last year with it, including some fairly remote parts.

rmbryan 7y ago

More information from the dedication: https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626

oneoff-acct 7y ago

I'm deeply unsettled by the economic relationship between China and the rest of the world, particularly with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear nations have tried at all costs to avoid arms races and armed conflict. However, war still happens, but on more subtle fronts. China is waging economic warfare in earnest: - Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters. - Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products. - Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs - Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T) At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state. I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering to what extent one should do business with China.

yuy910616 7y ago
It's kinda strange that these accounts are popping up all over the place to stoke fear on China. What's the agenda here I wonder? Chinese are known to pay folks to post on foreign forums. I'm not sure who is behind these...fascinating stuff
- oneoff-acct 7y ago
  I'm a US citizen working at a tech company. I have a normal HN account with reputation above 2000. These are my own thoughts and opinions. I'm just honestly afraid of being targeted by Chinese hackers for posting sentiments like the above.
  - account73466 7y ago
    It is like to post something negative about LGBT and claim that you fear being attacked by their active members. China and Chinese don't give a XYZT about you. HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the war with Eastasia is in progress.

colanderman 7y ago

I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for those just casually interested in the topic. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware-hacker https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware...

jancsika 7y ago

Will any of the vendors give you source code and specs for the hardware?

wst_ 7y ago

I'm not that interested in the place and electronics per se but I've found the intro really interesting in terms of culture and language. Great read.

k_sze 7y ago

Even if the maps are outdated, I think the point-to-translate pages serve as a really nice, condensed English<->Chinese glossary of electronics. This helps not only foreigners, but also native Chinese like myself who have received their higher education in English. You see, I usually can’t hold a conversation about electronics or computer science in Chinese, even though my mother tongue is Cantonese and I’m generally fluent in Mandarin.

canada_dry 7y ago

Was fortunate to meet and spend some time with Andrew (Bunnie) a couple years ago. The guy is just a stellar nice person. Generally speaking he's usually the smartest guy in the room yet he's totally approachable and down-to-earth. One of his gifts is a Feynman-like ability to explain complex topics in a down-to-earth manner. If you get a chance to hear him speak/present, take it.

anujdeshpande 7y ago
Very similar experience at a recent conference. Love his blog, and writing in general as well
shaklee3 7y ago
I remember him from the original Xbox hacking. I believe he was the one that originally figured out how to load custom software on it, and maybe even got sued?
- henriks 7y ago
  The book he wrote about this is freely downloadable these days at https://nostarch.com/xbox https://nostarch.com/xbox .

xiii1408 7y ago

This is extremely topical for me, as I'm visiting the Shenzhen electronics market for the first time today. :D My Chinese is okay, although I don't know any of the technical terms. Thanks for the reference! Looking forward to experiencing this firsthand.

baybal2 7y ago

Here is a nice video on the city: https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0 https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0

throwaway8282 7y ago

> I also hesitantly recommend installing Baidu maps. It’s basically malware, so uninstall it upon leaving China Anyone have more info about this? What does/can the app do with the permissions it has?

hamhand 7y ago
It agressively pushes all the other products Baidu has, like every other Chinese big app, but Baidu's reputation is especially bad, think about it as Baidu's Wechat super app. You can try Tencent Map. If you are using Android, then get ready being asked for all kinds of permissions as it's Chinese apps' tradition, some apps even outright refuse to run if you decline it.

FpUser 7y ago

This is my friend's story. He owns a company that designs and manufactures various electro-mechanical things. So he went there to check quality of his order that was getting ready for shipping. All went nice and shiny and then as he was about to head back to an airport he mentioned that he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. So the the owner said wait a min. Dials his buddy with another factory that happen to manufacture batteries and explains the task. So they set up the line and in 3 hours he had the whole amount made and put in crates. Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.

unicornporn 7y ago
> he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. Non-standard you say? Clever. Now the guy who sold him the electronics just made a whole bunch of money not only from your friend, but also from the a batteries buddy.
- achow 7y ago
  > Now the guy who sold him the electronics just made a whole bunch of money not only from your friend, but also from the a batteries buddy. That is how things work, and nothing wrong with that. If not money then a favor got chalked up which would be reciprocated when it is called for.
- FpUser 7y ago
  What's your point? This is how any business operates except some non taxable charity activities
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    This form of capitalism is anathema to those who consider the world rich enough, and therefore misunderstand that hard work is as much a part of capitalist wealth as anything else. Those 150,000 batteries didn't make themselves, and the guys who knew how to get it done in a few hours wouldn't be in that condition if they didn't earn the capital required to make it happen ..

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

Excerpt (from page 19): Internet & Helpful Apps "As a general rule, the Internet as you know it is blocked in China. There’s no access to Google services, Facebook, Twitter, Imgur, YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Telegram, etc. etc. As a consolation, there’s Bing. Roaming data service will bypass the firewall since roaming phones are assigned an IP address from the home country of the subscriber’s carrier, but it’s an expensive option. Prices vary depending upon the carrier, but currently T-mobile offers one of the lowest cost international roaming data plans. A VPN is a cheaper way to get around the firewall, but depending upon the political climate even VPNs can be blocked. China’s firewall routers have the ability to do deep packet inspection and thus can automatically discover VPN connections running on unconventional ports or with other small modifications intended to bypass less sophisticated firewalls."

mysterypie 7y ago

Is there any way to visit Shenzhen without submitting your fingerprints to the Chinese government? I've heard that everyone gets their fingers scanned at entry these days even if you never had to submit fingerprints with your visa application. Is that correct?

mlacks 7y ago
I’ve been to China three time in the past three years; I’ve never had to be fingerprinted.
- spats1990 7y ago
  Anecdata but I got fingerprinted just passing through Shanghai airport in transit at the end of 2018. I haven't visited the US or transited through a US airport but again anecdotally I've heard this happens there too (even in transit).
  - Tijdreiziger 7y ago
    I'm not sure about transit but when I (EU citizen) have been to the US they took all ten of my fingerprints, and this has also been the experience of my friends. (Incidentally, my own government doesn't even have any of my fingerprints...)
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      I wouldn't be so certain that your government does not have your fingerprint... if it's European you can bet that at least your secret services have it as part of "we spy on your citizens, you on ours" agreement.
      - neuronic 7y ago
        Of course they do - at least in Germany. Your biometrics are part of your personal ID and passport. It is only thumb and index finger though plus facial scan / photo.

paulkrush 7y ago

I just went. It's really darn cool, but if I lived there I would still buy everything online, except the shipping would be faster! I can't believe how many e-bikes were there. Also when you go the sound of shipping tape is everywhere.

ecesena 7y ago

A list of (pretty awesome) projects from the same author/team: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi

plq 7y ago

> (...) And then there are the pronunciation subtleties, such as 芯片号, “xīn piàn hào” (which means an “IC’s part number” (literally “core flat item’s number”), which with misplaced accents sounds like 性偏好, “xìng piān hào” which means “sexual preference”. No native speaker would ever mispronounce or confuse the two, but a foreigner going up to a local asking “What’s your chip’s part number?” could be heard as “What’s your sexual preference?” if mispronounced and taken out of context. I love how every language out there is choke-full of these :) Though so far nothing beats the importance of punctuation in "Come on, people"[1] [1]: As heard in one of John oliver's episodes

rladd 7y ago
Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning "packed full".
- plq 7y ago
  Pun unintentionally intended, then :) Thanks for the note.

nneonneo 7y ago

Oh, this is wonderful! I'm learning Chinese right now - conversationally capable, but I have no grasp on jargon (especially electronics). This is a great guide. There are some issues with the pinyin transliterations - they seem to be machine-generated rather than human-generated: there's some errors, like mixups between chang/zhang for 长, and weirdness like "yao yao ling" for 110 where we'd usually use "yi bai yi shi". But technically these wouldn't matter much in a point-and-translate context because neither party would be paying attention to the pinyin. Anyway, aside from that nit - I suspect I will be using part of it as a study guide for my Mandarin learning. Thanks, Bunnie!

georgebaily 7y ago
Yao yao ling is just what everyone says - it's a phone number. You don't read it as "one hundred and ten"
- nneonneo 7y ago
  Ah, I’m sorry. I should have clarified further - I was referring to the transliteration of “110V” as “yao yao ling dian ya” - “one one zero volts”. In that instance the transliteration is incorrect as one would usually use “one hundred and ten” (yi bai yi shi).
xster 7y ago
That's like saying 911 (US equivalent of 110) should be "nine hundred and eleven" instead of "nine one one".

webboynews 7y ago

Anybody got a Chinese to English dictionary where more frequent meaning comes first? Cdict has this problem that lots of times some random obscure meanings are mentioned before popular meanings. (For example ，下去- go down is an irrelevant meaning and the first relevant meaning- continue is 3rd in the list)

jonatron 7y ago
Just googling "下去 continue" brought up https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8B%E5%8E%BB.html https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8... . Googling "chinese english dictionary common usage" brought up someone with the same complaint as you: http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-dictionaries.htm http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-dict...
- webboynews 7y ago
  I appreciate your trying to figure out a solution to my problem. A sincere thanks.

betimsl 7y ago

There's a game on steam called SHENZHEN I/O. I think that if you finish that game and study this document, you can implement anything you want really :)

contingencies 7y ago

Actual hardware R&D focused business owner in the PRD here. 18 years China. IMHO the 'essential guide' is just buy stuff online: barely anyone actually physically visits stores anymore. Certain parties make money and cred by claiming being in physical proximity to a bunch of cables and parts in HQB is somehow awesome, and in a minority of cases walking around might save half a day, but really you can just order ahead or use your own stock if you have a clue which area you'll be working in, and you'll have saved 10x half a day in rent by not being there. Even if you buy stuff online many stores will give you their business card, WeChat or QQ account and you can just ask them to send stuff pronto on subsequent orders, cutting Taobao or whatever online platform out of the equation. Shenzhen is very expensive for real estate and salaries. If you want to go scrappy, live somewhere cheap in China (Yunnan is awesome) and use Taobao. If you want to go scrappy and fast, live somewhere cheap in the PRD and use Taobao. (There are minor electronics ecosystems around Xi'an, Chengdu, Zhejiang and Beijing, too.) No need to even visit Shenzhen, although outer Shenzhen / Dongguan is still a great place to acquire lots of types of industrial equipment, IMHO inner Shenzhen / HQB really just isn't anymore. Hardware startups should go somewhere cheap to iterate. The cheapest and cleanest well connected major area of the PRD is Zhuhai, where we moved from Shenzhen 1.5 years ago. I go back about once a month for outlying factories.