Shenzhen in 60 Minutes: Fishing Village to Future City
A walk through one of the world's most astonishing urban transformations
Shenzhen · 6 stops · 10.2 km · ~3.3 h · Generated
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1. Luohu Port — Where It All Began
Luohu Port, Shenzhen
Stop here, and take a deep breath. You're standing at the threshold of one of the most extraordinary transformations in human history.
This is Luohu Port... the oldest border crossing between mainland China and Hong Kong. It stands as the oldest border crossing connecting Hong Kong and Shēnzhèn, and what you see today was not always this bustling maze of inspection halls and metro connections. This is where Shēnzhèn's miracle began.
The story of this crossing starts with a railway bridge. Work on the first Lo Wu Bridge commenced in nineteen oh six and was completed in nineteen oh nine, opening in nineteen ten as part of the Kowloon-Canton Railway. For decades, that bridge simply carried steam trains between Hong Kong and Guangzhōu. But after the founding of the People's Republic of China in nineteen forty-nine, through-train passenger services were halted. Lo Wu Station became the terminus, and both passengers and freight had to be transshipped at Lo Wu. It wasn't until nineteen seventy-nine that through-train passenger services resumed.
And that year... nineteen seventy-nine... Everything changed.
Think about this. In nineteen eighty, Shēnzhèn had a population of just thirty thousand. A quiet fishing village, rice paddies stretching to the horizon. In May nineteen eighty, the Central Committee designated Shēnzhèn as the First Special Economic Zone in China, promoted by then-paramount leader Dèng Xiǎopíng. And This gate... this crossing... became the funnel through which the entire experiment flowed. Hong Kong money, foreign ideas, and millions of migrants from every province in China poured through Luohu Port.
The permanent population of Shēnzhèn exploded from three hundred fourteen thousand in nineteen seventy-nine to over thirteen million by twenty nineteen... an increase of approximately forty-three times in just forty years. That is the fastest urbanization any city has experienced in human history.
Luohu Checkpoint is one of only two land border crossings in Shēnzhèn that existed Before the reform and opening-up period. The Joint Inspection Building you see today started construction in January nineteen eighty-four and was completed and opened on June fourteenth, nineteen eighty-six. But the numbers are what truly stagger. Official figures show that about one hundred million people cross the border through Luohu Checkpoint annually. Statistics show that the port is the third busiest in the World.
One hundred million crossings a year through a single checkpoint. Let that sink in. That's more than the entire population of Germany... walking through these halls... every single year.
Although this Special Economic Zone became literally fenced off from the rest of China by an eighty-five-mile-long barbed wire fence, its opportunities seemed limitless. The Shēnzhèn government even erected a Second border, a so-called "second line" of barbed wire and checkpoints... not between China and Hong Kong, but between Shēnzhèn and the rest of China itself, to control the flood of people desperate to reach this place.
So as you look at Luohu Port today... remember. Every skyscraper, every tech company, every neon-lit street in this city traces back to This gate. This is where thirty thousand became thirteen million. This is where a fishing village became China's Silicon Valley.
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2. Dongmen Old Street (Laojie)
Dongmen Pedestrian Street, Luohu District, Shenzhen
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3. Dongmen Cultural Square Bronze Relief
Dongmen Cultural Square, Dongmen Middle Road, Luohu District, Shenzhen
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4. Huaqiangbei Electronics Street
Huaqiang North Road, Futian District, Shenzhen
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5. Shenzhen Museum — History & Folk Culture
Shenzhen Museum, Civic Center, Fuzhong 1st Road, Futian District, Shenzhen
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6. Shenzhen Civic Center
Shenzhen Civic Center, Fuzhong 3rd Road, Futian District, Shenzhen