South China Material City Tour

Shenzhen Adventure Day 24

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With my back still in significant pain from the previous nights massages, it was time for the South China Material City.

The South China Material City is an industrial region situated in Shenzhen where you can go to get raw goods or materials in bulk quantity.

It’s basically a big outdoor mall where you can go into one of many vendors and find anything you need, from gears to leather. Everyone is very hospitable and there were offers of tea at some of the shops.

There was also some (very large) indoor malls, with lots of outlet priced goods:

There was also some more random stuff, like people drying spices on their shop fronts:

Or a seemingly abandoned amusement park:

You really could find anything there, from chemical supplies:

To raw plastics used for cables (something like $10/25 kg):

To clips:

That one is absurd – knives on carabiner clips to cut your rope?

Leathers:

Creepy Leathers:

Sewing machines – from new, to very old:

Tile carvers:

Papercraft store where you can get nice boxes made:

Lastly, there was cool finished good store with lots of cool electronics:

Overall, one of the funniest parts of the South China Material City was all the samples people were willing to give for free. I got clips, bracelets, ropes, fabrics, and many other things for free or very cheap. I almost made it into a game to see if I could get something at every vendor I stopped by. The odd thing is that when I contacted one of the suppliers to buy more bracelets (as gifts for my return) they never got back to me!