When you search for things to do in Shenzhen you’ll come up with a few uninspiring, uninteresting and pretty dull sights and activities. That should be a sign that Shenzhen is not going to be a great place to visit.  Here’s a few things to do in Shenzhen that I’ve done but don’t necessarily recommend.

First up, and the only thing I’ve done there that’s been halfway decent, is the Shenzhen Safari Park.  Took Grobbler there last year and it was actually okay.  All the typical animals and you can go in a caged truck, much like the one in Shanghai, and get drive around while tiger’s jump up at get fed. You feed them yourself by attaching raw meat to a steel pole, stick them out the window and the tiger’s jump up and eat them. All very entertaining, especially for kids. Not the most natural thing to do and probably quite cruel, but this is actually not a bad place and if you only do one thing in Shenzhen, this should probably be it.

Next to the Intercontinental Shenzhen Hotel there’s something called Splendid China Folk Village.  Exactly how it sounds.  Actually not sure ho to describe this, it’s a rather bizarre and very busy area with some takes on Chinese culture.  It’s supposed to reflect the history, culture, art, ancient architecture, customs and habits of different nationalities. It’s one of the world’s largest scenery parks in the amount of scenes “copied”. The park is owned and managed by China Travel Service, so you get millions of Chinese tourists by the busloads.  To be fair, apart from the crowds, I actually thought this was ok, we had a good time walking around with Grobbler.  There’s a lot of people there but it wasn’t overly crowded and definitely not the worst crowds I’ve encountered in China.  Most people were well behaved.  Don’t get too excited, I wouldn’t go back there in a hurry and not sure it’d make my top things to do in Shenzhen. (nothing probably would).

Golf at Mission Hills.  I guess if you’re a golfer it might be worth a visit.  I’ve given you my two cents in “You Should Know This”, in which I’m rather critical, but if I was to try and be positive, if you’re a serious golfer, it’s probably worth checking out one of the clubhouses, either Shenzhen or Dongguan is fine.  Just be prepared for a long journey there and back as traffic can be diabolical, especially if there’s an accident, which is rather common in Shenzhen.

OCT East is a resort, golf courses, hotels and theme park.  The hotel, at least the one we stayed at, called something like OCT East Interlaken, is supposed to be a copy of Interlaken in Switzerland. If you know China at all you’ll know what this is like.  It’s good comedic entertainment at the least. I don’t know who comes up with these things, I guess the local Mainland Chinese love it but if you’re a westerner, there’s no need to go here.

The Theme park is rather unappealing as well. There’s millions of people there yelling, screaming, pushing, shoving and the like and really not much to do of note in the whole park.  OCT East is quite a way from Shenzhen city, about an hour, and not worth going to. There’s a couple of golf courses there, which would be rather good if there weren’t so many people playing on them.

And now for what is supposed to be one of the best things to do in Shenzhen – shopping.  China has high import duties on luxury goods so you don’t come here to buy that type of stuff.  You come here to buy knock-offs.  My only experience with this was getting loads of DVD’s from my bro, playing them inly to discover they were completely different movies than what was on the packaging.  We also bought a bed up here, which in the end wasn’t that cheap, and wasn’t that good to sleep in – we’ve since sold it.

All in all, as I keep saying, nothing to see or do here, move on…

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