I couldn’t write much about Shenzhen because all my months were blurring together. By February, I was familiar enough with Shenzhen that I could give directions to other people: I attacked the streets with the cockiness of someone privileged enough to be living in Houhai without working full-time. I had friends, and my Chinese improved to the extent that I could make them laugh. But by March, I was burned-out from living here (and from the fiasco that was winter quarter), and almost desperate to get out. Shenzhen had blurred before me: a never-changing, never-ceasing stream of VC’s and tech and pretty buildings and mosquitos. One month later, having used every possible excuse to avoid Shenzhen, and having completed a whirlwind of a tour around China, I think I can sit down and write about it.

Shenzhen has imprinted on me in very subtle ways. I’ve bought a new pair of aviator-inspired glasses. I’ve started using reddish eyeshadow. I wear long, loose black pants, and finish my WeChat messages with ~. I’ve perfected a disdainful face for the high-end malls, and I’ve created a maximum-efficiency routine for getting through subway security. I could’ve written about these personal developments (could you even call them developments? I think they’re just adaptations), but what I wanted to write about was Shenzhen itself: the city that’d become progressively more suffocating over the last few months, but which I still find too immense to put into words. Only now have I realized that it’s very hard to write about a city. After a few aborted attempts, I’ve decided not to pretend to speak for the entirety of Shenzhen: I guess I’ll start with myself.

Yesterday, out of equal parts self-pity and boredom, I pulled up TripAdvisor’s recommendations. Shenzhen’s top ten attractions were tour buses that started in Shenzhen, but ultimately ended in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, and Yunnan. Everything noteworthy in Shenzhen was accessible by subway lines 1, 2, 3, and 8. I’d already hit up Ping’an Tower, the ten mega-shopping malls, and Nanhai E-Cool (the artists’ hub; my dance studio is right there). I was more than familiar with Sea World, a ten-minute walk from E-Cool that boasted a plaza of eateries and a gorgeous view of the sea and Hong Kong—it was my go-to place after dance, and hands-down one of my favorite places in the world. I knew all the bike and subway routes through Futian and Houhai. I hadn’t climbed the mountains in Nanshan, nor had I spent any time on Shenzhen’s beaches, but the city itself was…just that.

Shenzhen was created for economic gain, and it’s very good at what it does. It’s not a city meant to be walked through, at least not for leisure or sightseeing. It’s Silicon Valley dialed up to one-hundred, if Silicon Valley received both the full funding and protection of the government, alongside immense FDI (foreign direct investment) and the privilege of housing a considerable portion of the country’s financial power. Its skyline, already intimidating in its endless slew of glass buildings, is made indomitable by its mountains and seas. There is nothing more exhilarating than driving past the lightshow of the Luohu skyline at night, and there is nothing more exhausting than walking through Futian’s tech finance hub during the day. Prior to 2021, I’d never stayed in Shenzhen for longer than month—giddily, I’d thought I could never get enough of its modernity. Shenzhen makes a cold beauty out of pragmatism. It’s glamorous in a calculated moderation—a calculation that works to stunning effect—and I still can’t say that about any other city.

Yet here I am, five months later, with a distinct feeling of defeat: this city, for all its glory, considers itself secondary to its function. There’s not much more to see or experience, but there’s a lot I’m expected to do. Everyone lugs a suitcase through the shopping malls, financial districts, and subway stations—people rush here to work, rush back to a more temperate home once they’re done. Everyone stares at their phone. People talk loudly about weight-loss pants and skin-whitening products, and nobody’s ever enough for anything. The malls are devastatingly expensive and flawlessly air-conditioned, and no shop here feels like a shop (they’re fancy hallways filled with Instagrammable props and empty, edgy pseudo-art exhibitions). Shenzhen’s too beautiful. Of the natives and migrants I’ve talked to, none of them feel that the city is truly accessible: they can come to a mutually-satisfactory agreement with it, can come to enjoy or thrive under its backbreaking pace, but there’s nothing underlying the city’s function that they can grasp: no sense of group identity or culture. Shenzhen’s too young to have many natives (my family is the rare exception). It can’t fall back on a history. Tourism might comprise a massive part of its economy—indeed, the streets are replete with white tourists who don’t wear masks—but it’s not like Beijing or Chengdu or Shanghai, one of those cities overflowing with history. I could spend an entire day walking through any of these cities, without any destination in mind, and emerge exhilarated and triumphant. In Shenzhen, without a destination, I’ll just end up slumped over a coffee or boba as I wait out the afternoon humidity. Everything’s too far away when I’m walking—nothing ever seems to be getting closer—yet everything presses down on me when I’m sitting still. Shenzhen certainly has its pockets of art and culture, but they don’t feel as immersive as they feel fragile.

Of course, I’ll be working full-time soon enough, which means shadowing my supervisor as we interview startup founders across Shenzhen—I’ll be able to travel to the smaller districts, and I hope I’ll gain a deeper appreciation for the quieter parts of the city then. But I can’t help thinking that I’ve been to these quieter parts already, and once again, it’s just....there. Like those smaller boroughs have been left behind, and I can’t quite place my finger on what part of history from which they’re supposed to have grown.

Everyone tires of a city. I have friends from Beijing who insist that Beijing is a very boring city, friends from San Francisco and Seattle who say the same. But never has a city tired me out like Shenzhen has—although this may have to do with how Shenzhen is, indisputably, the city that marked my transition into adult life. Having to fend for myself in an urban center on a different continent has been a power trip at best, and a complete mess at worst.

So, where do I—both literally and metaphorically—go from here? I know I won’t be able to live in Shenzhen in the future. I also know that this city has played an immense role in shaping my sophomore year: I’m genuinely thankful for all that I’ve learned, and all the opportunities I’ve been afforded. Interestingly, my creative writing has also improved—albeit only after I’d returned from traveling. There’s just too much dissonance in this city. How could someone possibly process it all without poetry? Some cities turn their noses up at romanticization, but Shenzhen hasn’t—and I’ll take full advantage of that.

Then again, perhaps I’m asking too much from this city. There’s always a pressure on an Asian American to rake up as much of the motherland as possible when they visit: yes, modernity, but also history, language, culture, belonging, as if we’re trying to compensate for the perceived inadequacy of growing up in such detached environments. For Asian American Heritage Month, I’m closer to my heritage than I’ve ever been, yet it’s jarring to think that Shenzhen is my heritage, too: the VC’s and thirty-story apartment buildings, the business dinners and decanted red wine. For Asian Americans, heritage is not only a means of connecting to the past, but a hypothetical. What could we have been? What could we be more of?

But here’s the thing: at the end of the day, I think I belong. I can hold my own at work, at dance, while shopping. I can stride through the streets like a native. I know enough ways to overcome someone going against me—with a look of scorn, with a certain kind of laugh, with a subtle brag—and I know how to hold back, in that particular Shenzhen way, before I act. And that’s at once scary and exciting: that I can move at the same pace as everyone else, at a pace so fast that I can only see what comes next.