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Sprawling Shenzhen is composed of numerous districts. Luohu and Futian are the "downtown" districts, with most of the major shopping areas and hundreds of hotels. A foray outside the sprawl of Shenzhen proper is worth the trip if you have the time; Yantian and Longgang are the closest destinations for beaches and atmospheric historical buildings.
Futian, Shenzhen's commercial hub, is where Shenzhen's gourmands go for a night of gastronomic pleasure. The Zhenhua Road area has scores of excellent restaurants competing for the patronage of Shenzhen's very discriminating diners. The Shekou neighborhood in the Nanshan District is known for its many outdoor bars and restaurants. It's well known by locals for for Sea World Plaza, a pedestrian mall with alfresco restaurants, low-key bars, and a completely landlocked oceangoing vessel (now transformed into a bar, hotel, and nightclub complex).
If you're interested in watching art in the making, spend an afternoon at the Dafen Oil Painting Village, a small town 20 minutes by taxi from Luohu, which employs thousands of artists painting everything from originals to copies of classics. Where do all those oil paintings you find in motels come from? Visit Dafen and you'll know. It's open most days from about 10 am to 8 pm.
Like the rapidly disappearing hutong neighborhoods of Beijing, Dapeng Fortress in the Longgang district is a living museum. The Old Town contains homes, temples, shops, and courtyards that look pretty much the way they did when they were built over the course of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. For the most part, the residences are occupied, the shops are doing business, and the temples are active houses of worship. Dapeng's ancient city is surrounded by an old stone wall, and entered through a series of gates.
Hakka Folk Customs Museum and Enclosures is a large series of concentric circular homes built inside an exterior wall that basically turns the whole place into a large fort. Inside the enclosure are a large number of old Hakka residences, some of which are still filled with tools and furniture left over from the Qing Dynasty. While some restoration projects elsewhere might pretty things up to the point of making the site look unreal, the opposite is true here.
The museum itself has seen better days, but this musty old building is chock-full of excellent contemporary and classical art from all over China. Not only will you find works from young up-and-coming artists, but there are also impressive multimedia displays and sculptures.
This is Shenzhen's most popular—and perhaps strangest—tourist attraction. It's pretty cheesy but young kids might get a kick out of it. Essentially, it's a decommissioned Soviet-era aircraft carrier that a group of business executives bought in the late 1990s. Parked in perpetuity on the top deck of the ship (which is as long as three football fields placed end to end, and gets wickedly hot in the summer) are several Soviet fighter planes and helicopters.
Surrounded by the OCT Loft's trendy cafés and bars, this is where you'll find works from well-regarded artists from Beijing and beyond. A cluster of exhibition halls and venues, the OCT Art Terminal hosts the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (usually in May) and the annual "New Works #1" exhibition, as well as artist-in-residence programs, live music, multimedia installations, and dance performances. The crown jewel is the OCT Art & Design Gallery (closed Monday), a massive glass-and-steel renovated warehouse, which champions contemporary art and aims to further graphic, fashion, and digital design in China.
With miniature versions of more than 130 of the world's most famous landmarks, Window of the World is one of China's biggest and busiest homegrown theme parks. Divided into five geographical areas connected by winding paths and a monorail, it includes—not at all to scale—the Taj Mahal, Mount Rushmore, the Sydney Harbor Opera House, and a 108-meter-high (354-foot-high) Eiffel Tower that can be seen from miles away. There is also a fireworks show at 9 pm on weekends and holidays.
