Yes, really! The spine of Futian’s Central Business District, from Lianhuashan Park south to the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Centre, offers landscaped, palm-lined boulevards that see relatively little foot traffic, especially on weekends when the suits are off work.

With pedestrianized cobbled lanes, diverting street art, free galleries and plenty of cafes and bars in which to make pit stops, OCT Loft feels tailor-made for strolling.

​A wooden boardwalk winds its way around the artificial lake that contains the Minghua, a vintage cruise liner, at Shekou’s famous lifestyle plaza.

One of Shenzhen’s older skyscrapers, this 384-meter office tower was Asia’s tallest building when it topped out in the mid-1990s. Built at the rate of four floors every nine days and completed in just 40 months, it was a widely touted exemplar of “Shenzhen speed.”