After many months of excitement and preparation, I have finally arrived in Shenzhen for my Internship Program with First Chiropractic. Shenzhen, being one of the wealthiest cities and the first Special Economic Zone (SEZ), is home to a lot of young expats, giving the city an international, cosmopolitan vibe. It is an extremely modern city established about 30 years ago with a very fast pace of life compared to back home. During my first weekend I had the opportunity to taste a range of traditional Chinese dishes like the Gong Bao chicken (spicy chicken with peanuts) and Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), while brushing up on my chopstick skills with the other interns.
Having a day off on Monday, I decided to kick off my adventure on a spiritual note by visiting the famous Hong Fa temple Hong Fa is built over a series of terraces with a scripture repository resting at the highest level. I took the chance to learn about the core values and beliefs of Buddhism and tasted simple vegetarian food.
After the first two days of introducing and establishing objectives at work, the long public holiday weekend of Dragon Boat festival arrived. The Duanwu Festival (Dragon Boat festival) commemorates the life and death of famous Chinese scholar and poet Qu Yuan. Occurring on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, it is celebrated as ‘Poets Day’. During this festival the Chinese families traditionally throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into water and eat tzung tzu (rice dumplings). We took the weekend to hike up Mount Wutong with an altitude of 943m. It took us around 3 hours to reach the summit where we were rewarded with extraordinary views.
Despite being absolutely exhausted from the hike I decided to travel to Guangzhou, the largest city in south central China, for the long weekend. Here I visited Shamian Island, the temple of six banyan trees (Liu Rong temple), Yuexiu park, Guangdong folk arts museum and Guangzhou zoo to see the pandas. The Yuexiu park is a good afternoon hike and contains the Five Ram Statue, the symbol of the city. Shamian Island reminded me of home with its European style buildings and atmosphere. Shamian Island also appears to be a popular choice for wedding photography as we saw many couples posing in beautiful outfits. The highlight of the trip was the canton tower which had a spectacular view of the Pearl river and Guangzhou city at night.
That’s a wrap up of my first week here in Shenzhen and I hope to have a great time travelling, learning and enjoying the rest of my time here.
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