China Shenzhen.

What a place!

A city of 20 million souls. Giant gleaming skyscrapers. Little men squatting on the street a flattened cardboard box with noisy mobile phones on display at your feet. Giant modern factory complexes producing consumer electronics with pseudo brand names like "Konka" who have the same font in there logo as Nokia does. Supermarkets and art galleries Lamborghinis and excellent public transport. Shenzhen is across the water from Hong Kong, its on the Chinese mainland and you heard it here first: Shenzhen is going to be very popular amongst travelers soon because it is so breathtaking. No one knows that yet.

In this globalised time you find all your big city feature shops such as Starbucks, McDonalds, Kfc, Pizza Hut, Ajisen Ramen, Nike flagship store etc. But if you want to buy size 13 shoes forget about it. But if you want a Mercedes-Benz, no probs, just head down to the big mall in the city centre of Shenzhen and visit the shiny dealership that's built into the side of the mall. That mall is called Mixc by the way. There's an ice skating rink in the upper floors area and shops selling authorised Apple reseller all the Apple products and there's Haagen Das for your ice cream requirements too madam. Careful though, 1 in four people in Shenzhen has Hepatitis.

Poverty and great wealth intermingle with predictable results. Like ancient Rome, life is fairly cheap and anything is available if you have money. Westerners are seen as targets for all manner of reasons, but mostly poor people who have nothing but a sick child at home or no home at all seek to do anything for you or to you in order to get your money. They perceive westerners as uniformly rich happy and just about royalty. I did well to dispel this myth in my local area where over the period of several weeks, the locals came to know me as someone who waited in line at lunch time to get my food from the delicatessen section of the local supermarket like the rest of the locals. People stare at me on the street like I'm some unknown quantity. They gawk at me on the train like i'm some potential powerful ally or deadly threat.

I'm treated with undue respect. All the women want to know me, all the women will make excuses to talk to me - back home in the West women don't give a damn about me - Western Asian women too. But here I could have affair after affair one night stands hand over fist again and again. But remember the Hepatitis statistic. And I like blondes anyway. All things being equal I'm a man who resides at the bottom of the ladder of social acceptance. I always hated my lot in life, but curiously, when Chinese women started sucking up to me, I recognised it as fake and longed for my usual socially rejected status back in Europe. At least I know the drunk Finish Blonde is telling me the truth when she rejects me. Then she promptly throws up into the toilet. I digress. Watch your wallet watch your health, don't be fooled people are out to get your money and in Chinese society its a Zero-Sum-Game. They will sus you out real quick and whether its business or its the girl in Pizza hut they are sneaky and they aren't used to any kind of welfare trust based ethics. They expect you to try to rip them off and they manoeuvre elastically themselves: To get you when they can. If you have power you are respected and if you don't they will eat you alive.

I acquainted two Malaysian-Chinese business men . They told me how they were taking advantage of their relative spending power - or just power being foreign and better off than most Chinese, in order to get away from their wives and play away. I thought of telling them about the Hepatitis statistic, but I held my tongue. We sew what we reap. Instead I draw their attention to the regular inhabitant of my favourite Ajisen Ramen restaurant. A door mouse pokes his snout out of the hole in the wall of this swanky world standard modern establishment and makes his scurrying way tracking the wall along a well traveled path. I've seen this mouse on several visits. I do ask them sleazy business men where to find good quality SD Cards. One time I told the staff about their mouse. She acted with affected appalled shock and offered to move my seat further away from the mouse run and to take my soup away. I declined. Sleeping with hookers in Shenzhen I class as unhealthy behaviour, but about a restaurant door mouse; I don't give a damn Let me explain further. I'm healthy I survived my travels with my health and my wallet intact. No was able to steal from me and I never got sick. Clearly my strategy paid off. But I have a suspicion that those Malaysian business men with the inside tip on great SD Cards are probably now explaining to their wives about how come there are mushrooms growing on the end of their old fellas'. Am I overly cautious? Well I say just because its on offer, doesn't mean it should be taken. Of course not everyone thinks like I do.

I was impressed by Shenzhen. I met all sorts of people there Chinese and foreigners. The new subway blew me away with its excellent facilities - its plastic electronic token operated payment system just like the Bangkok subway, only newer and more extensive lines. Shenzhen is only 25 years old! Before that, it was a fishing village, quiet and sleepy. I can imagine rice farmers wearing straw or bamboo hats and fishermen polling along standing at the end of a canoe with a muzzled crane bird perched at the bow ready to go forth and snatch a giant golden Koi fish for its master. Now the sky scrapers gleam, the factories stand like mountains, the girls make iPhones with soldering irons and the seasonal typhoon does its thing twice a year. And its not wrong. Who says big cities are a bad thing? I don't hate progress. To me the giant city is just as valuable as the old fishing village. Indeed Shenzhen is a kind of free market prototype city that will probably be emulated throughout the realm shortly. Shenzhen modeled on Hong Kong, and so it goes. They say Shenzhen is the most dangerous city in China, but I went there and I survived. I know for sure its also one of the wealthiest. I saw a Lamborghini zooming down the new freeway and in town there were plenty of luxury cars. A very impressive place. And by the way its not true that Chinese are a conformist society. I mean we have this stereotype that Asians - particularly Chinese are all about fitting in and being the same as their peers. But in Shenzhen I witnessed many different fashions of dress and plenty of individuality in peoples' personalities. I was struck at first by the sameness of the people all the same eyes the same skin the same hair. But its this false stereotype that leads casual observers to assume that asians are a conformist bunch. They're not. They are individuals with unique personalities attributes and capabilities. I was though, immersed in a sea of 20 million tightly packed chinese people. Those who are cool like me don't see this as even the slightest issue. Those muttonchop clad egg and chips men who are prone to culture shock ought to stay at home in Birmingham.