Can anyone who has been to an electronics market in Shenzhen (or visited Shenzhen in general) comment on what their experience was like?
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.
Freed markets for the win.
I couldn't get a ribbon cable last month from what used to be the best electronics shop in town!
You can still get some parts at The Source these days, but not all of them, and not nearly as expansive a selection.
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.
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/ (and surprisingly don't discount Long and McQuade [repair shop, Bloor St] for good quality pots and switches, albeit at a markup).
Doing BGA rework with the right tools is pretty trivial. You can teach the average high school kid to do this stuff but it's not worth it when they could just go to college and learn circuit design or programming to create a design for a less educated technician to build. If they'd rather learn the rework, there are plenty of places that will hire them for more than what someone would pay to have their phone potentially destroyed.
That and regulatory capture (think plumbers/ac repair/etc) mean that while the part may cost $25 retail, and it only takes 5 minutes to replace they can get away with charging $400 for it (happened to me recently) because they know its going to cost you more to replace it. Appliance repair is going the same way, as is automobile repair at a lot of dealers/name brand chains. The smaller guys will replace an alternator for $40+parts, but your going to be looking at 250+marked up parts at a lot of places. I had the dealer quote me $800 for a door lock, that I ended up fixing mysel for $2 in ebay parts and an hour in labor last year.
There are very few places remaining where there is enough density of need in immediate parts, live debugging, or cottage industry-style production to sustain markets like the one in Shenzhen. Worse, decline in one part of the market (dev tools for examples) would result in a decline in visitors and business adjacencies that speed the decline of the other parts.
Aside from Shenzhen, I'm only aware of Akibahara (smaller and more consumer focused) and some of the markets in Seoul (one of which is smaller and consumer focused, and the other which is more machining/tooling cottage industry focused).
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.
We could only pray that the western repair shop sends the board somewhere for refurbishment.
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.
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.
There is little proper education for something like BGA soldering, and if there is then you're more likely to get a job as an engineer.
Trivial thing happened to my headphones. The wire broke very close to the jack plug because of the frequent bending. There was a young guy there, I told him what happened using my broken Japanese, he patiently listened, took the headphones, made some basic check on them, took my phone number and told me to come in 30 minutes. In 20 minutes I got call that it's done. When it came to payment he asked me how much, I think, I should pay. I've been oblivious so he proposed 500 JPY, which is close to nothing, considering that I've had no tools and spare parts.
London, UK - the same situation happened. I've been told to throw it away.
UK has destroyed the supply chains, the experience, or the ability to train or employ such people any more except in very exceptional cases. End result is few have even seen a jack plug or mains plug that's not moulded or would know where to start.
So we have shops that have no idea how to fix a broken plug or cable, and jewellers that have to return a watch to the manufacturer for a battery change. I'd guess in 1980-1990 most shops on Tottenham Court Road could have soldered a new one, along with most similar shops around the country now they're all just box shifters.
You litteraly cannot find ANY electronics shop in Paris (there were still a few ones a few years ago), and no one apart from some non-profits initiative is willing to even open a piece of electronics to do some simple repairs that involve soldering (the only repair being done is changing a part on phones/tablets/computers).
It's really depressing, because a lot repairs are really simple (unsolder a capacitor that is visibly broken, solder a new one in, or even replace a fuse in audio equipment) and instead those objects are trashed, contributing to the growing ecological problems.
That state of affair comes from both an economic lens (manpower is too costly compared to buying a new one), and a skill shortage (people watch me like an alien when I do those simple repairs)
I gave them a call and 15 min of biking later I had what I needed for a few euros.
The shop is an inscriptible mess but the guys running it are ok.
Everyone in the know insists on being there for the repairs to make sure no shenanigans occur. So the reputable places do it in front of you and explain what they are doing so you don’t feel cheated later if something else breaks.
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?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
This may not work for more than street-food-level expenses though.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3036457/foreign-t...
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.
I've been avoiding China for a visit, but now I need to check it out after watching those.
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.
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-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.
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
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.
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!
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.
What happened to the manufacturing? I imagine that worldwide demand has increased in the last ten years. Where did it move to?
Second, the global demand for electronics and light industry goods has, paradoxically, not increased much, and even went down for some product categories. I can say that with some surety as I have access to serious market research and statistics papers for which my employer pays up to $10k a pop.
The emerging markets have slided a lot, and developed markets never really recovered since 2008.
Local industry relied greatly on "Shanzhai" goods that were selling by tonnes to places like Africa, Middle East, and the rest of South and South East Asia.
There is now very little space left for such middle of the market goods in these markets. Consumer choice has now gotten much more polarised towards high and low end segments. On the low end, vertically integrated supergiants steamroll any competition, and on the high end, Western companies still have an overwhelming edge over Chinese domestic companies with their terrible marketing.
I first visited 10 years ago, right after the Universiade, lots of people told me they cleaned up the city, just for that event. And ever since then, every time I return, there are new buildings.
I know quite a few locals from Shenzhen, but most of my friends come from all over China, and it's great that they all hang out together.
In terms of nightlife, even 10 years ago there was plenty, although it was much more local. Now it has turned more towards high-end clubs and bars.
Wow, that is not a true statement at all! Lived in Shenzhen 2009-2010 and have been back a lot since. There was always stuff open super late. Maybe you are talking about western oriented stuff?