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Shenzhen is Like Living in a City-Sized TechShop
- stretchwithme 13y agoI guess that's another drawback to zoning laws in the US. Density makes a lot of creative things possible in cities that are harder to do in the burbs. Of course, the upside is possible negatives aren't all concentrated together either.
- mjn 13y agoIt's not only zoning laws. Houston (where I spent a portion of my childhood) is a large city with no zoning laws, and yet is exceptionally sprawling. Suburbanism in Houston ends up being propelled through a mixture of: 1. Land availability, transit, and culture. There is a ton of space, it's flat w/ no natural geographical constraints, people like to live in big houses in the suburbs, there are freeways, and there is barely any public transit to speak of. So people live in the suburbs. 2. Contract law. There are large, privately developed suburbs where the developers require purchasers to agree to contracts governing their future use of the property, as a condition of sale. Suburbanites don't want a metalworking factory next door, so if you're developing a suburb, you get better sale prices if you can assure purchasers that that won't happen. So you do so by adding contract conditions. In a typical Houston suburb, your deed will have conditions attached, in which you have signed an agreement that neither you, nor anyone you convey the property to, will: subdivide the property, redevelop it into anything higher than 2 stories, redevelop it into a house that takes up more than x% of the lot, operate a commercial or industrial establishment on it, or lease it to tenants. This de facto introduces something like zoning via private contract law. So if you really don't want zoning, you'd have to actively suppress private-sector zoning, not only repeal governmental zoning.
- enf 13y agoIt also has parking requirements and lot size minimums, which are a big fraction of the problems that are part of zoning in other cities.
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- mahmud 13y agoThe article is talking about Hua Qiang Bei, hardly the whole city of ShenZhen. It's what you might call a mall, surrounded by a modest shopping district. That's like witnessing other parts of Shenzhen and concluding it's all about hipster kids with effeminate anime haircuts, shopping, video games, and HK tourists. Lots and lots of Hong Kong tourists.
- wisty 13y agoIt goes beyond zoning laws. China has maybe 4 classes of businesses: small businesses (which pay small bribes to local officials instead of following the rules), bigger businesses (which are gradually pressured to play by the book, depending on their size and who they are bribing), state-owned entities (which get the rules changed if they want to do something, but generally follow whichever level of government they report to), and foreign businesses (which have to do everything by the book). So, it's probably illegal to run a business from a street-level apartment. But they do it anyway, because the government generally just says "no harm, no foul" (and some red envelopes probably get passed around). A homeless guy can buy a box of coke (or even beer), and sell it at a bus stop, and as long as he keeps on good terms with the local powers no-one would raise an eyebrow. He wouldn't get much business, though, because there'd be a guy with more capital doing it better and cheaper 10 steps away. In the US, he'd need a hawkers permit (which is usually literally impossible), a liquor license, a business license, regular tax returns, and so on.
- shell0x 13y agoThat sounds great. I'll be in China/Hong Kong for holiday and it seems like I could fix some broken devices there :)
- larsberg 13y agoYou will need to speak Mandarin. I was in Shenzhen (for an academic conference) recently and hit the electronics stores, all of which are staffed by folks who pretty much exclusively speak Mandarin. That said, it was awesome just to wander around, even by myself as an english-only speaker. And the train system is super easy in Shenzhen, like Beijing.
- meric 13y agoI got robbed on a train just as I was about to get off at shenzhen once, it was in broad daylight and the train was full of people. Lost my phone. My biggest mistake was carrying a huge bag carelessly. Keep your valuables hidden, keep a look out for suspicious people and look them in the eye.
- decktech 13y agoMandarin will get you around, but Cantonese will make you friends.
- matthewrudy 13y agoeveryone in Shenzhen says Chaozhou language (潮州话) will get you even further.
- nirvanatikku 13y agoYou most certainly can. Here's my 2c for places to go in HK: > Sham Shui Po > Mong Kok / Yau Ma Tei > Wan Chai Computer Center > 298 / 188 Hennessy Road If you go to any of the places above, don't be afraid to bargain. If you pay cash you'll be well served by doing a quick survey of a few stores - there's usually a clear price and you should go below it. You won't have to worry about any language issues, too.
- whatshisface 13y agoI know it's just a dream, but why can't we build one here? Maybe if one of those hackerspaces took off... <replace 'here' with any location>
- est 13y agoBecause you don't have a consumption downstream industries?
- mahmud 13y agoTechShop, there is very little software industry there. It's an industrial town, and there are/were parts of it that are off limits to foreigners. Sure, you can source parts to every gadget and machine you would want to build in Hua Qiang Bey, but there is no tech "scene", for lack of a better word, not many locals using their own wares to make new stuff. It's an industrialist city geared toward exports.
- xilei 13y agoShenzhen hosts the biggest Software company in China: TENCENT. Also the ecosystem is changing fast with a year of Startup Weekend and HAXLR8R over there.
- mahmud 13y agoGood to hear that. I love Shenzhen, not as cultured as many other Chinese cities, but it was fun.
- xilei 13y agodude, Shenzhen came a long way and is the future of China (I lived in 5 cities across the country in the past 12 years). Design is all over the map and is going to swallow HK in the next 10-20 years.
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- OldSchool 13y agoVery cool! Sadly, in the US at least, I venture to guess that each generation (~5 years) of 'hackers' arrives less mentally connected to circuits and more connected to graphic design. It wasn't -that- long ago you could buy a solderless breadboard-equipped ISA or PCI card and easily cobble together your own custom PC hardware project. Countless hours of analog fun too!
- hawflakes 13y agoInterestingly, I was in Taipei a few weeks ago and I noticed there was a marked decrease in computers for sale. After chatting with a guy that grew up there, he said that when he was in school everyone was into EE and hardware. Now the tables have turned and everyone's into graphic design and a lot of the stores that used to be geeky havens are now selling stuff about design tools. Moving up the food chain, I guess.
- izak30 13y agoNow they're doing it over USB and Serial and WiFi. You're being too hard on us younglings.
- cortesoft 13y agoI don't know. I've been messing around with programming on computers for 25 years, and it was only until the last couple that I have gotten into hardware hacking. Arduinos and their ilk have made hardware hacking easier these days, I think. That, along with better websites to buy supplies, have made hardware hacking even more accessible than ever.
- OldSchool 13y agoYeah, hardware and test equipment has certainly never been more accessible and affordable. Back when Radio Shack had more than a drawer full of components per store they were still extremely limited - now you can get whatever you want in a couple of days. Gotta love all the free hardware-related software tools yet sort of hate the end of thru-hole components!
- rdl 13y agoI wonder if there would be a way to have the Shenzhen/Hong Kong tech ecosystem while also having acceptable air quality. Hong Kong is probably my favorite city in the world, but the air is really bad (not quite as bad as Beijing or old Mexico City, but bad). I assume a lot of the pollution is due to less value-added industries and primary electrical power generation (using coal), which aren't really essential to a tech area -- you could run HVDC to send power from far away, or go nuclear. EV vs. ICE would move a lot of the transportation pollution away, and domestic needs could be more electrified (I think rural China still uses a lot of wood/coal burning domestically, which is bad for both indoor air quality and, in aggregate, pollution.)
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- decktech 13y agoAs one data point, the air has been objectively better after the factories shut down for each holiday I've been here for over the last three months.
- nostromo 13y agoThis really worries me as an American. We're losing the entire culture of hands on production. Fry's and Maker Faire is great, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to this sort of thriving community. I think the US needs its own Free Trade Zone. Let's put it on the US / Mexico border, allow anyone to take up work there. Promise 0% taxes for a decade and put up no trade barriers at all. Maybe that would bring some of this production back home.
- rtpg 13y agoIn all fairness this place is one district of one city in China. If you go to Akihabara in Tokyo you get somewhat the same thing : small stalls that sell exactly one type of product. You find your people who sell lightbulbs, or a guy who sells only capacitors. But my point is that while that district has a bunch of that stuff, you really don't find that anywhere else (at least not in Tokyo). This is probably a similar deal.
- tellarin 13y agoI think you're missing the scale of this here. Being to both I can tell you that Akihabara might have specialized shops, but nothing to the level of Huaqiangbei. Neither in terms of component diversity nor in the number of shops around. And the article also mentions the direct access to actual people from the companies/factories. This alone is what makes it absolutely unique, in my view.
- rtpg 13y agoThe scale is definitely different, but my main point is that its very likely a local phenomenon. People might read this and assume stuff like this is everywhere in China. Although it might be like that.
- JDShu 13y agoI think you are right. Shenzhen is located in one of the wealthiest provinces in china, is less than an hour's train ride from Hong Kong, and is designated a special economic zone. That probably gives it several advantages over other Chinese cities.
- jasonlgrimes 13y agoI can't imagine being able to walk up to the engineer who built the part and being able to ask them questions directly. No 4 day waiting period between ordering parts. Great piece guys!
- garretruh 13y agoHaving been to similar buildings/stores (though not quite the size of the Shenzhen ones) in Shanghai, it's very easy to spend hours upon hours browsing the crowded aisles. That's definitely one of the primary things I missed moving back to the states. Well, that and real Chinese food.
- gregpilling 13y agoI just returned from China on the weekend. I spent a week in Hua Qiang Bei and toured two factories. I was blown away by the availability of seemingly everything. The article does not exaggerate the sheer number of components available for every possible use it seemed like. One section of a huge multi story mall was only security cameras, the next section was only home audio equipment, the next had a all the parts to make LED lights for architectural applications, then another had a desktop SMT machine for sale ($3800, 12 reels). It went on for several blocks of giant electronics shopping malls. Language is definitely a barrier, and the sheer choice could be overwhelming. When you have 10 LEDs to choose from at Radio Shack you can make a choice easier than when you have ten floors of stalls that all sell LEDs. I got lost on several occasions wandering around these huge stores of parts. It was awesome. I wish there was some comparable place in the US, but I have never heard of it.
- gcb0 13y agoI just returned from 4 electronic shops on the weekend, in a major california city. I couldn't not find jumper cables and switches on the size that i needed, or plastic knob covers. let alone a good looking big metallic knob cover that i wanted. I finally found the jumper cables only at a frys, but for 7x the price i could have them online, shipped from china. But since i was in a hurry, I paid $20 for a broken stereo receiver at craigslist and removed the parts I needed.
- liotier 13y ago> I paid $20 for a broken stereo receiver at craigslist and removed the parts I needed The electronics clandestine recycling yards of Lagos and Karachi are inshoring back to California... Who said that the USA can't revive its industry ?
- decktech 13y agoThat SMT pick-and-place is pretty nice, Ian got it set up with Eagle [1]. It's a little sketch on the 603s and 402s though. [1] http://dangerousprototypes.com/tag/pick-and-place/ http://dangerousprototypes.com/tag/pick-and-place/
- ippisl 13y agoIn addition to what's the article tells, you can get in china components you just can't get in the u.s. For example , the mt6250 which is 260mhz arm7 microprocessor, with 8MByte ram , with dsp, with cellular modem, with bluetooth and with all kins of IO.it can run a feature phone with touchscreen and run games. Or be a cool internet of things micro controller. Or. How much does it cost ? $2 in volume , in low volume you can maybe get it in $3 in china. But no way to get it in the u.s. . And i bet there are plenty of other gems available.
- lcentdx 13y agosearch electronic parts @ http://search.taobao.com http://search.taobao.com, you'll be surprised. keyword: 電阻 (capacitor)，電位器旋鈕（knob），貼片機 （SMT machine）. You can also check individuas store like this one [1], price is in RMB. [1] http://shop33817767.taobao.com/ http://shop33817767.taobao.com/
- jonmrodriguez 13y agoAwesome, that's a lot of SMT machines!
- tellarin 13y agoI have a colleague here in Beijing that says Taobao is his "best friend forever" because of this kind of thing. :)
- sultezdukes 13y agoI started thinking of Blade Runner Los Angeles after reading the first couple paragraphs.....Hannibal Chew sitting in one of those stalls saying, "I just do eyes".
- Simucal 13y agoI was thinking Night City in Neuromancer, but basically along the same lines. "But he also saw a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn't there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself." "Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored research who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you'd break the fragile surface tension of the black market: either way, you were gone, with nothing left of you but some vague memory in the mind of a fixture like Ratz, though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks."
- kenjackson 13y agoWho shops there? Do they do enough business to justify their existence? Is it hobbyists?
- jonmrodriguez 13y agoI think the cash cow is other big companies that see the samples, negotiate a price, and then place a large order.
- femto 13y agoWho is the typical customer at this shop? Is it purchasing agents from volume manufacturers, or engineers building prototypes? I'd guess it is the former, and the people building prototypes are lucky, in that they can piggyback off this ecosystem, and the sellers are happy to deal with small quantities. Perhaps this type of shop has disappeared from places like the US because the volume manufacturers now do their purchasing via more efficient B2B Internet transactions, and the prototyping community in any one location on earth is too small to make this sort of shop profitable? From a prototyping point of view, the anomaly is the presence of this shop, not its absence. A solution might be to recreate the "techshop" experience on the Internet, in a way that gathers the "long tail" of prototypers from around the world into a number that justifies a significant investment. A virtual techshop? Every component would have a complete mechanical/electrical simulation model available. Want to see what a component looks like? Pull up a dimensionally accurate 3D model. The model can be rendered to get a visual picture, or pulled into any CAD package to check fit or do a dynamics simulation. Electrical components should be able to fit into a circuit simulation. It should be possible to search/browse components, including a parametric search. Since we've got 3D models, it should be possible to render a display case where you can pick up and inspect each component. Once a design is complete, it should be possible for the system to generate a set of purchase orders, and mechanical drawings for custom parts, directly from the design data. (This is what CAD/EDA software already tries to do, but typically stops at the BOM stage rather than progressing to a purchase order.) A dream, but dreaming doesn't hurt.
- mckilljoy 13y agoI can say from personal experience that the customers are probably a bit of both. Engineers walk through looking for parts for their prototypes, and then once the prototypes are complete, come back and set up a contract for 1,000's more of the exact same part for the production run. To me, that is the real benefit. In America, you can make your prototypes with parts from Digikey or Fry's, but if you actually wanted to make a production run, you have to source all your parts from scratch.
- erohead 13y agoI've visited SEG Market and saw people walking around with BOMs as if they were grocery lists, arguing with vendors over pricing and then walking down the row to talk to a different shop. Low volume stuff, like 1-3k pcs orders.
- polshaw 13y agoI find urban China absolutely fascinating, a feeling of relentless unbounded growth and development like London in the mid 1800s or New York in the 19?0s. To think how quickly these mega cities pop up out of nothing.. I have a feeling we will see nothing again quite like it. On a similar vein to the OP, this is a video of a walkabout through the SED electronics market in Shenzhen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0Qaxzp2nQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF0Qaxzp2nQ Be forewarned, it's just the guy looking at tablets and asking prices of everything, but a skip through really gives you an impression of the place and the diversity of manufacturers (skin deep, at least).
- vidarh 13y agoThe craziest part is how these cities are rapidly merging, with the Pearl River Delta well on its way to becoming a single city at least in structure. Coupled with the Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Economic Rim, with active policy to to connect the constituent cities. It makes London and New York seem like little villages. We're talking potentially forming a continuous megalopolis of quarter of a billion people or more within the next couple of decades, consisting of a handful of tightly connected megacities.
- codyZ 13y agoThis is hardly news at all. It seems a China-tech article pops up every few months talking about relatively the same thing, awe, amazement, efficiency, whatever it may be. Its not just Shenzhen though. You will find comparable shopping mall esque ones in other large cities. Parts of Yiwu and other cities in the south also have tons of electronic components. However, like many already stated, language is definitely a barrier for those that don't speak Mandarin. ...if anyone's looking for an agent. let me know ;)
- ausjke 13y agoShenzhen is the headquarter to: Huawei ZTE Tencent software (largest software house, QQ rules in China) etc. It's also the center of GPS/Tablet/Surveillance...you name it.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThere is a lot of this in Silicon Valley. Competition isn't as fierce, and a lot more respect for IP laws, so it isn't quite the wild west but you can walk into Avnet's warehouse and get pretty much any part you need. The biggest issue was Fry's getting into the component business, putting the small guys out of business, and then getting out of it. Still recovering from that but you can see it in places like JameCo getting much better. As Trevor complained we don't have a lot of small hand factories, which is a bit surprising. Partly its the cost of space, partly its the regulation environment. So if you need a custom fastener you can get it made but if you then want 10,000 you need to switch to someone else and that takes time. That said, the culture and features grow in environments where a lot of hardware design and implementation is being done. Much of the money in the valley is in software (its slowly shifting back) and so much of these places died off, but you can still find it if you look for it.
- pbo 13y agoNobody mentioned the Shanzai. The term was explained to me by the founder of a hardware company in Shenzhen. They are small companies that specialize in infringing IP laws and copying consumer electronics products almost as fast as they a released on the market. See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/30/content_10582935.htm http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/30/content_1058293...
- calinet6 13y agoI've heard this about the apparel manufacturing market as well. Parts for sewing machines, complex machinery, etc. etc. are all right there in town. It just doesn't exist in the US. They don't produce in China because it's cheaper, they produce there because it's the only place you can.
- jetti 13y ago" They don't produce in China because it's cheaper, they produce there because it's the only place you can." That's hogwash. This kind of stuff doesn't happen overnight, it is business adapting to the needs of marketplace. If apparel manufacturing made a comeback in the US then something similar to this would also springup to suppor that industry.
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- rollo_tommasi 13y agoThe visual is quite cool, but the piece itself is a pretty typical "white guy walks into east coast Chinese city and is blown away by THE FUTURE" piece of insight-free China-commentary.
- sojudog 13y agoCorrection: Shenzhen is Like Living in a City-Size TechShop where if you breath the air, you get cancer.
- _seininn 13y agoThe prevalent attitude here is worrying. As a non-american, I think diversifying and spreading the production (and knowhow) of technology is a good thing, in pretty much the same way not having only one browser/os vendor is a good thing. It's even better when it's spread geographically, and across different cultures. I understand the reasoning of wanting to keep every thing local, but, and please pardon my frankness, it seems selfish .
- vidarh 13y agoI absolutely agree with you that spreading the production is a good thing. But that's not really what's happening with Shenzhen. It's the centralisation in Shenzhen that, while awesome in one way, is the most troubling to me. If "something", be it politics or natural disaster, or crazy madman, happens to the wrong part of Shenzhen, the global impact would be dramatic. Remember a bit over a decade ago, when earthquakes on Taiwan sent RAM prices soaring? Or when flooding in South Asia sent harddisk prices through the roof not that long ago? The centralisation in Shenzhen is rapidly becoming a far higher risk to the global economy than either of those two.
- mark_lee 13y agoWhatever you can get from Shenzhen I can get cheaper online, internet is new Shenzhen
- Livven 13y agoIt's not just Shenzen. Many large Chinese cities seem to have an area composed of these kind of electronics malls. In Beijing it's located in Zhongguancun, for instance.
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- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoWhy we don't have these things in the EU? Because guy who would build them would be penalized 75% on income in France. Socialism is like a cancer - bad cells in the body feeding on the good ones. Making Chinese competitive factor this much stronger. EDIT: Making instead of Make
- liotier 13y ago75% is a marginal rate for extremely high salaries, not the actual tax rate - even for salaries with a slice in the 75% range. Besides, an entrepreneur will rather worry about corporate taxes. The French "Parti Socialiste" may have 'socialist' in its name, but if you look closer you'll find that its policies are not far removed from the Democratic Party's left wing... But clichés die hard.
- slacka 13y agoWhile working as an Engineer for over 2 years within walking distance to Huaqiangbei, I discovered there's a dark side to the SEG market that a tour guide is not going to point out. This is also where much of the grey market and fake ICs end up. Our company wasted weeks and thousands of dollars trying to save time by using some SEG parts to speed up the production of an EVT board last year. SEG also caters heavily to the shanzhai phone manufactures.
- losethos 13y agoGod says... by letter concerning this matter. 5:6 The copy of the letter that Tatnai, governor on this side the river, and Shetharboznai and his companions the Apharsachites, which were on this side the river, sent unto Darius the king: 5:7 They sent a letter unto him, wherein was written thus; Unto Darius the king, all peace. 5:8 Be it known unto the king, that we went into the province of Judea, to the house of the great God, which is builded with great stones, and timber is laid in the walls, and this work goeth fast on, and prospereth in their hands. 5:9 Then asked we those elders, and said unto them thus, Who commanded you to build this house, and to make up these walls? 5:10 We asked their names also, to certify thee, that we might write the names of the men that were the chief of them. 5:11 And thus they returned us answer, saying, We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and build the house that was builded these many years ago, which a great king of Israel builded and set up. 5:12 But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven unto wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon. ---- God says... solitude Domain assented cried plunging grievest rood cheeks touchedst Symmachus answers deriding fictions decree Know gave seal society riotous energy in_practice Angels Project's gross-hearted ending endeavoured closed heaps unfailingly
- Kekeli 13y agoI begin to wonder, whats the impetus to put america back in this stead