Review: The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen

V interesting! I wonder how much is applicable, now that we have sites like https://jlcpcb.com/parts. eg " At which point for an American or European without a word of Chinese even sourcing a resistor becomes an impossibly daunting task.".

And along those lines, it's interesting how datasheets in Chinese can be comprehensible to a foreigner, due to the interesting parts being the (Arabic) numbers and diagrams.

> IC part number, or “xīn piàn hào”, or “芯片号” sounding similar to “xìng piān hào”, or “性偏好” which means “sexual preference”

That’s equal parts amusing and horrifying

Tonality is nuts. One of the first things you learn is that the questioning ‘ma’ can also become ‘horse’ or ‘mother’ given a tone.

“Māma qí mǎ, mǎ màn, māma mà mǎ” - “Mom rides a horse. The horse is slow. Mom scolds the horse.”

I visited in 2018, not to build any parts but just to see the sprawling markets. I had no idea about the original guide then -- very neat to learn about it and see that it has a successor!