Shenzhen

Shenzhen (?? Sh?nzhèn) is a border town in Guangdong, China right across from Hong Kong.

Understand

In the early 1980s, Shenzhen (then a fishing village) was designated a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), to be a buffer zone between Hong Kong and the rest of mainland China. Currently it has a population of approximately 8 million.

Get In

Passport and visa are not required for Chinese citizens from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Macau Special Administrative Region holding re-entry permit for mainland China.

Visitor visas are required for foreign passport holders except Singapore, Brueni and Japan passport holders. Group visa can be arranged from authorized travel agencies in Hong Kong free of charge if the visitors are travelling in groups.

Alternatively, visa-on-arrival can be obtained from Huanggang checkpoint and Louhu checkpoint for HK$150. The visa is valid for Shenzhen Special Economic Zone only, and holders cannot leave the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. No photo is required for the visa-on-arrival.

Please notice that as of April 1, 2004 visas-on-arrival are NOT available to US citizens.

By Air

Shenzhen has an airport with domestic and international flights.

By Land

Shenzhen has border train and bus connections to Hong Kong. There are trains to Guangzhou and busses to most nearby cities.

By Water

There are ferries from Hong Kong and Zhuhai.

Stay safe

Shenzhen has lots of pickpockets, especially in areas like bus and train stations.

This text of this article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. It has been slightly modified to fit the general design of this website. The authors of this document are Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel, Evan Prodromou, Li Daobing, Wikitravel user TheObtuseAngleofDoom and the following WikiTravel users: InterLangBot, Jpatokal, Pashley. The original version of this article can be seen at http://wikitravel.org/en/Shenzhen.