New meets old
A journey to Nantou Ancient City
New meets old
A journey to Nantou Ancient City
I burnished my old fart credentials in Shenzhen the other day. Exercising my Hong Kong Foreign Permanent Resident China Pass for the first time, I eased through immigration and headed straight for the Metro with my newly installed payments app and QR code. I marched confidently up to the ticket machine, stabbed my destination on the touch screen and brandished the code. QR FAIL said the machine.
I tried several times, then went off to seek assistance. There was only the security guard. I showed him my QR code, made a sad face, and pointed accusingly at the ticket machine. He looked at the QR code, looked over at the machine, and looked at me, looked at the code again and threw his head backwards. I could tell that, behind his surgical mask, he was laughing.
After he had pulled himself together, he spoke into his phone and then showed a translated message to me: “Go through security check and show your QR Code to the ticket barrier.” I did as I was told. The barrier did eye me rather suspiciously as I approached, but flew open at the faintest flash of the code. I slid through before it could change its mind.
In the city
Fashionable emporiums in the ancient city
I was headed for Nantou Ancient City in the western part of Shenzhen. It’s even older than me. For an ancient city, it really is rather trendy. Within its walls, there are chic restaurants and coffee shops. Blan Bunny, a purveyor of speciality teas and teaware, and lots of boutiques. For serious fashionistas, look out for Soarin, a shop that specialises in cool retro threads.
There is some fascinating history, too; there will be more on that in a later article. In the meantime, if you’ve got any old walled villages you don’t know what to do with, go and take a look at Nantou for some ideas.
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