Why Shenzhen Feels Like the Future

What if the future is happening already? But most of us just don't know where to look. Welcome to Global Next China Edition. Let's discover what's next. Joe, it is a scorching Shenzhen day. We're outside, but where are we at? We are at the Ping An Finance Center. I believe it's the fifth tallest building in the world. We're going to be eating at the 118th floor. Okay, and we're going to be able to see what? This entire thing that is Shenzhen. 360 of all Shenzhen. Crystal, you're from Hangzhou. Right. Also a tech city. What do you know about Shenzhen? Well, I know nothing about Shenzhen, but I heard a ton of Shenzhen. I think everybody in China knows a lot about Shenzhen, like on paper. So I just want to know what makes Shenzhen different. Well, there's China's speed, and then there's Shenzhen's speed, and that's at a completely different level. Oh man, I want to check it out. Listen guys, I think that Shenzhen might be the most important, underrated, unknown city in the world right now. Let's go check it out. Let's do it. What is this? This is a Japanese restaurant. Yeah. Doesn't this feel like Zhongwei? Where are we at? So this restaurant is called Altitude. I don't care where you are. This is almost like that. It feels like Dubai. And you can see literally everywhere. So 360 of all Shenzhen. Oh wow. The city was built on the gadget. It was a fishing village like 40 years ago. Yeah, nothing here before. I mean, what are we doing now? Yeah, so you can order your main here, and then you can go and grab the buffet as well. So this is like a hybrid. You get a really expensive thing, and you can have as many as you want. Right. This is a cold mantis shrimp for your shrimp cocktail. Oh my goodness. The canto. Yeah, got to. Hey, the cantos, we got to go for the char siu. Definitely. That's a must. They got a lot of Chaozhou duck here too. I've seen your viral videos. What do you actually do? So my main business, we actually work with brands that develop and do their manufacturing. Right. That's why it was a big reason we moved to China. Love that. Can you tell us what kind of brands, or are y'all an NDA? NDA. But aside from the business of Shenzhen, but like what lifestyle things have changed for you? It is so affordable to eat out here. So we just eat out all the time. Okay. Between that and food delivery, my home cooking has definitely rapidly declined. We're in Shenzhen, so we got to do two things at one time. What is Shenzhen speed? Help Western people understand that because it's like me being here, I understand it now, but maybe people back home, they have no idea what you're talking about. By clustering everything together, it's very competitive, but everything becomes super efficient. If you're building a drone, the motor suppliers, the chip suppliers, they're all in one place. So you can just move so much quicker. Crystal, is it kind of like your hyper competitive Chinese middle school and high school? Well, I think every single Chinese is super competitive and it seems like a lot of it is by design as well, right? Because the country wants the economy to grow faster. So they want to squeeze out of people and business and it's brutal, but whoever wins, wins big, right? I mean, I got to say that after Gaokao, there is no hardship in life anymore. You can do whatever. Really? Yeah, because it's so hard. I had nightmares after nightmares for six months after Gaokao. Every single day, I was really about going to take the Gaokao again. That's how hard it was. Like we all have PTSD. Like the nation had Gaokao PTSD. There's a lack of like softness in China. Even like the high schools, like I was talking to my staff and they were like, oh, we go to school from seven to 10 o'clock. I'm like, what? It's crazy. Coming from North America, she's like, oh, it's like normal. It's normal, yeah. Six days a week. Competitive dynamic, but if you make it, you come up here to this buffet and eat these tiger prawns from Thailand. These tiger prawns. You think about it, you're probably the highest person in the entire world eating tiger prawns right now. That's true. Oh my gosh. I never thought about it. Hey guys, listen. Shenzhen, I believe, will have the first of a lot of things probably moving forward in the world. Yeah. I think it has the most billionaires. Like it's the fastest rate of creating billionaires. I think like a lot of people are coming from smaller villages to come work in Shenzhen. It's a better life. It's a big deal for their family. And like they get to provide for the family. You can get a better life. And like this is your chance to make it. My man behind the camera right here from Inner Mongolia, man. So he came for a reason. It's a perfect example of that, right? He didn't come here to slack off. Oh my goodness. This is Shenzhen. I'm gonna go for it. Yeah, it is Shenzhen. But it's such a beautiful city. I mean, I don't know. I'm from Hangzhou. I would say Hangzhou is the best. That's true Chinese provincialism, guys. So Joe, what do you think about the fashion scene in China? Because, you know, recently there's a lot of people wearing Chinese fashion in Taylor Swift's wedding. So yeah, it's a big deal right now in the West. I think right now when you look at like Chinese brands, their speed of innovation, they're able to iterate. They're able to try things. And there's so much rich culture that Chinese brands are just taking over I think every sector at this point. Yeah. The ability to use technology to like solve these quick problems, even like AI adoption here. AI adoption in China versus North America, I think it's very different. And here it's very celebrated. I think in the US, only 39% of people are optimistic about AI and like 80% of people in China are like optimistic about AI. So did you feel that in your upbringing growing up here? Yeah, in terms of technology. Yeah, like that embracement of that, you know, versus like the nerd like gets his underwear hung up on the locker. First of all, everybody like wear like glasses in school, right? So all of us are nerds, right? Like you can't just be like, oh, you know, like you're a nerd, but like you're a nerd too, you know? So Joe, do you think you're going to go back to Toronto anytime soon? Okay, so originally, the original plan was that we saw at our Toronto office, we had like 35,000 square foot facility there. And I had all my staff and the original plan was to go back and forth every six months. And then the longer we stayed here, looking around, I'm like, we don't really want to go back even to like travel. Yeah. So we closed the Toronto office and now this is our main office here. Oh, cool. Very cool. We still have all our families in Toronto, but we're trying to get them over here to experience this. Oh, wow. So it's only been like a year and then you made all these big moves. Yeah. Shenzhen speed. Shenzhen speed, for sure. Shenzhen was actually like an experiment for China back in the day. So like in Shenzhen itself, it was like, we're going to experiment. There used to be a border for Shenzhen where you couldn't come in or out. Oh, wow. Yeah. And you had to like... So it's a country by itself. Well, it's just like this enclosed experiment. And obviously the experiment went really well. Yeah, for sure it did though. Hey, 10 out of 10 SEZ, special economic zone. Can you talk about the electrification of Shenzhen? Because we're looking at, you know, I don't even know how many EVs, but I almost feel like I'm looking at a museum right here where next to a combustion car. I would say probably the majority of cars right now are EVs. You'll notice because they have the green plates. Yeah. The blue plates are going to be gas cars, but it's just so affordable to buy EVs these days. And it's so easy to actually just like plug them in. Yeah. It's like 500 bucks to get a charger in your apartment. Do you have an EV yourself? I have a DD. We're headed to our next location, but Joe, you're about to get one of these. If I was going to get any Chinese car, it'd probably be this one. But I need to get a chauffeur as well. When you order the DD... Yeah, get the chauffeur, yeah. Why are the DDs and the food so cheap in China? Like between... You know, I think it's just the vehicles itself. They're cheap, you're not... Chinese people are very cautious about paying more than they should for things. You know, as the city changes, that about Chinese people is never going to change. They got all types of snacks and everything. There's a fridge here. A lot of people think that's just Instagram. You know what I mean? Like it could be fake. Oh, it's cold. They show the TV, by the way. Got a TV here. The seats are massaging seats, by the way. Okay. Oh, there's a clock there too. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people like, oh, Chinese EVs... The reason why Chinese EVs are not allowed in North America is because they would just absolutely decimate car drivers. Wait, how much is this car? I think this one is like... If you get the mid-model ones, like 60K? Dude, 60K... Yeah, you get a BMW X4 with nothing in it. Like carplay. This is cool. And you know one thing I noticed? Is even the rear view mirror is digital camera, yeah. It's definitely for guys. Because, you know, like... You know, like the car stuff is cool and everything. But like a girl is not gonna care about it as much as like art and fashion. I haven't seen any art and fashion here. Even though you're working fashion. Hey, hey, hey. Shenzhen's for guys. Cheers to that. Dude, I think when we're talking about electrification, it's crazy because it's just everywhere around you. Yeah. We're just... In the mall. This is actually... I think this is done. So this is BYD and Daimler collaboration. Oh, okay. This is like... Would you say that Shenzhen is an engineer's wet dream? Totally. Like, where in the world are you gonna see robot boxing? Right. The first one in the world, it says. Yeah. And guys, this is not BattleBots, which was used back in the day. It was like lawnmowers with like spinning blades. We're talking about like robot MMA, right? They don't have UFC, they have RUFC. Robot Ultimate Fighting Championship. What are we looking at? These are the robots, I guess, they're gonna be fighting. These are it. Yeah. You know, this may be the closest thing to the Matrix in the future. Remember when Neo Keanu Reeves downloaded Kung Fu into his brain to be like an expert fighter? I mean, essentially, we can't do it with humans yet. You know, maybe Neuralink in the future, but you could do it with this humanoid. It's only been like, what, like one or two years since we've seen humanoid robots. And they're already crazy, I think. Yeah, they're gonna be crazy. You know, you were saying something interesting. Like, if the robot fighting is here now, where is it gonna be in five years, right? And I think that's the whole thing about the city. It's like you're hopping into the city that is on a fast train to God knows wherever. Do you think girls will be into robot fighting? No. If the Robot Fight League and all the futuristic logistic stuff wasn't enough, they got cheeseburger pancakes. They're just thinking different. They're moving different. They're thinking about what people are gonna want in the future. They're gonna want two things that they love, lunch and breakfast. Where are we? New development area. We'll see like the, they call the AirPod buildings. Right, AirPod building. I mean, I see a lot of spaceship-like buildings. You know, that's the one thing I love about Shenzhen is they're willing to, even China in general, they're willing to try stuff with architecture. Yeah. Whereas you look at like Toronto and Vancouver, it's just like one generic design. Oh, Toronto especially. You guys love the glass square. This is what Apple should have done. Where are we going? I think we should go straight to the top trim. Yeah, that one. You said that that's actual gold? Yeah, all the top-line spec ones will have real gold. How much is it? I think you get the top-line spec one for like 70K. All these attachments are ones you can actually buy, even like those rows of buttons on the bottom. If you want it to be very clean, you don't need all those things, but you just buy and attach them on. So those are just like snap-on pieces. I'm just like, that's pretty crazy. So apparently now you can like type in something here and it will like project some lights. So like whatever word you type here, it will show up in front of you too. So if you want to surprise another person, be like, you know, happy birthday, something you just think. Do not let the Dominicans in New York City get a hold of this. But they're not gonna. But if they did, they flood in the road with messages. Here we go. Hold on. Oh, I know. Okay. Oh, look, look. Can we go to the control? Yeah. Oh, wow. This is like a karaoke controller. Oh my gosh. All right. They got TikTok in here. No, I'm just saying. I mean, is that surprising to you? But they got TikTok with the scrolling comments. But that's how it is. What, you didn't expect that? Come from the US, okay? Can't stand it. I gotta get out of here. This was like their max one. So I think when Apple launched their new phones, they had these and they were like, oh, we're gonna release the one with the screen at the back. That's crazy. What's that for? Selfie camera. A selfie camera. Wait, so you can see yourself from the back. Yeah. Oh, that's pretty cool. Oh, man. Oh, girl tag, girl tag. The only one I've seen so far. The only thing that got you excited? What? Oh, my gosh. Motion sensor. Dude, it's crazy. So listen, I'm speaking English. It's putting the English in. And then Crystal's speaking Chinese and it's putting the Chinese in. So this is the AI glasses. Apparently, you can change the color of the... Oh, my gosh. Yeah, so like I actually like it lit up when I was changing the color. We can see the lens changing. Well, I was asking this AI assistant the weather of Shenzhen today and there's like a speaker so I can hear everything it's saying to me. So now it's translating. Okay. Shut up. Now it's translating this paragraph to me. I just saw and then took a picture and it tells me in Chinese what this means. That's cool. The underwear and the socks. What? So you're saying that you're separating it by garment? Yeah. Actually, I want to get one of these. So you can like put whatever into either this or this or this and you can then select the mode. So it's gonna be three different modes. Yeah, so it can be underwear. This can also be underwear. But like the thing that's like... I think for Chinese is that we always want to like wash our underwear like... Separately. Separately just because there's a lot of bacteria on it, right? If you're like washing with other clothes, it's not very hygienic. So that's why... That's a good point. I actually didn't even think about that. That's why they have this function because otherwise you're gonna hand wash all this stuff. The Xiaomi store in terms of just like integration across product lines, 10 out of 10. Where are we headed? So we're gonna... Before we head to the culture center and get a drone delivery, I'm gonna take you into this store. It's called Nino 100 and has like all the Shenzhen-based gadgets are all sold in this like one place. There might be a robot in there. Okay, so a little bit for tourists that come to Shenzhen, might be a little bit more of a unified way to see everything. Yeah, exactly. This is what we came to see, guys. We're gonna walk the... Are you gonna pet the dog? Hello. The robot dog is very aggressive. It's a pit bull. Yeah. Dude, this is the future. So first you'll walk and then you'll run? Oh shoot. Oh my goodness. Whoa. It's moving for me, guys. Yeah, I like that. You can get a little hip movement too. You can kind of jump in it. Oh man. Whoa. If you don't like feel tech, you know what I mean? Because if you don't understand UI, UX, which is understandable, you'll feel this. Run, Boris, run. This is the best thing I tried in Shenzhen so far. This is crazy. Like what a place to grow up. Like you can go to the park and actually enjoy. You don't have to worry about needles. Look at this drone just sitting here. Oh my gosh, is that a drone? This is only in Shenzhen. You just randomly come across this. Can anybody explain to me because I don't know anything about drones. Like why is this so big? No, you can... Person flies in it. Oh, but like is that gonna be super dangerous? Like you're gonna be up in the air, right? Yeah, I'm sure you put a helmet on. Yo, look at just how modern this stuff is. Like what the heck? Dude, are we in a Kanye concert? Because I know he uses a lot of these like... Organic shapes. Crystal, what do you think Chinese people feel when they see these, I guess, really hyper modern structures? Well, I think they're like super proud of, you know, what we have achieved in the last few decades. Like I think that Chinese people actually know that they have a very, very good comparing to the rest of the world. You know, even some of them, like they don't go abroad and stuff like that. Yo, listen guys, look how intellectual this is. Neither love nor terror makes one blind, indifference makes one blind. I'm not gonna lie, you couldn't even have it in the U.S. James Baldwin is a U.S. author and thinker, but you just couldn't even have it in the U.S. Jo, what do you think, Crystal? Can Hangzhou really measure up to Shenzhen after what we've seen? No, I think it's very different. We have like a ton of influencers in Hangzhou, a lot of pretty girls. I haven't seen any here. I mean, yeah, technology. I admit, yes. But then, you know, yeah, sure. I heard that there's a lot of museums being built in Shenzhen as well, but they're gonna be like newer museums, you know? This is like a Dubai, Abu Dhabi kind of thing. But Hangzhou, we are like the ancient city. You know, we have the literature, like painting. I don't know, just different. I think what it is, is this is like a massive melting pot of different parts of China all coming together. All with the singular goal of... Making money. No, singular goal of pushing the world forward. Really? Or making money? Making money at the same time. But we're going to where? It's called, I think, Nanyue Ancient City. So we're going from like the newest part to the oldest part. It's one of the oldest places in Shenzhen. And you can get a little bit of a breather, like away from the tech, a little bit more like mom-and-pop little shops. Yeah. To the old ways. This is 1,700 years old. Okay. And what was it 1,700 years ago? 330 CE. Okay. And what did they do there at the time? Lived. Something important. Maybe not as important as Hangzhou was 1,700 years ago. Well, I don't know. As far as it's like some Cantonese people making trades. Where are we? We are at a 1,700-year-old ancient city here in China. Apparently not as old as... I mean, some of it, yeah. No, no, it's not. But it's old enough. But it gives you a little like contrast between the bright, shiny new Shenzhen and what it used to be back in the day. I'm getting a little bit more like lifestyle vibes. I'm seeing people with the little stylish, you know, hipster shoes and little photo shoots. Not the tech vibe. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So it goes to show you guys, Shenzhen still got some of the old, you know, Guangdong, Hakka, Quanzhou. Man, what a contrast. Like we're going, this looks like the set of Mulan. If you guys look ahead real quick, you can see this is like an ancient guard tower from Mulan. Listen, guys, we got to do some girl-coded stuff. I mean, you work in fashion, you know both sides. Frist of all, this is more your zone. So what do we think in here, guys? I need it because you guys both know more about fashion than I do, so. This is like really cultured clothing. I think it's actually not. It's a little hot to wear this stuff in Shenzhen. But this is just showing you like what's really available. The craftsmanship. Like everyone thinks of China, like Xi'an. But it's like, no, they can make really crazy stuff here. Yeah, yeah. What do you think about Chinese fashion? Like how do you see it in, I don't know, the world stage? I think when you actually look at Chinese brands now, is a brand where it's all about quality. It's about heritage and it's priced at a price point where they don't care about the psychological aspect of fashion. Because a lot of fashion is psychological. You buy luxury brands because how it makes you feel. Social status. Yeah. Now people in China, they're confident in who they are. Yeah. Now they're willing to buy things that don't need to project who they are. Yeah. Oh my gosh, like that's my dog. It's a whole cafe. We got to go. About pads. Girl-coded! Hello! The dachshund's got perpetual puppy eyes. Oh my gosh. So dachshunds apparently ain't right now in China. Like they're getting really popular. That's why they have this like dachshund store apparently. Oh my gosh. So this is also back in China right now. What the heck is this? Listen, you can't smell it through the camera. But this would be like the most premium spa type smell you would want. You know, when you're getting a massage. You want to go to sleep chilling in a bathtub. Now perfume. Let's go, let's go. You got to see. Like perfume culture is huge right now. So one thing I noticed about Chinese perfume is that they're very emotional. The name and everything is all about like memories. All about, I don't know, like certain kind of emotions about invoking you. And they use a lot of like Chinese ingredients that you don't find in the West. I want this one. I would like this one. I... Heartbeat. Like a girl, she's smelling this way. Heartbeat, okay. But it's interesting because it says heartbeat. But then the Chinese says addiction. Down and slow down. Yeah, so it says emotions of Shenzhen. Wait, is it dead? No, it's breathing. So Joe, what was the final verdict? The cat's alive. Oh my god, look at this cat. It didn't look like a fake cat. It kind of goes to show you how just safe it is for animals, right? There's an animal that has no defense mechanism like versus like a bodega cat. What is this? Pretty good. You feel the energy? It's really resonating for quite a long time. Yeah. Yo, you were just saying something interesting when you moved here with your family. Your wife is actually Italian. My wife is Italian. You know what? And I think that just goes to show you how much China is changing. I don't even speak Chinese. My wife doesn't speak Chinese. But you speak Canto though. I speak Canto. That's still Chinese, man. Don't listen to her. It's still valid. It's still good anyway. But like even with that language barrier, the pull to move to China was still worth it for us. And was that an additional consideration? Yeah, it was definitely. It's like how are we going to communicate? But I think five years ago would have been difficult. Now with our phones, with Google Translate, it's not impossible. It might be inconvenient, but it's not impossible. How does she like it? She loves it. Especially as a woman to not have to worry about your safety. You've been in Singapore, so you're good. But as a woman to be in a country to not have to worry about your safety is a massive stress reliever. It allows you to dedicate that sort of cortisol spike that would go to staying alive to something else. What do you think about the food? Like the noodles, you know, the food. Well, always taller, yeah. Noodles, pizza. Pretty much all the great Italian stuff came from China because Marco Polo. Exactly. They went to Hangzhou. China's so boring. All relatives to Hangzhou. I guess Crystal, this is your first time spending significant time touring Shenzhen. Yeah, for sure. You're a very proud Hangzhou person. Hangzhou people and Shenzhen people have a little bit of a rivalry. But what did you take away? I mean, I think Shenzhen is cool, right? Like the tech is insane. Like I think that if you're a tech person, especially consumer tech, I think this is the place. And it just seems like, I don't know, not just today, but like yesterday, you know, every day. Like if you wanted to do business and you want to make money fast, that comes with Shenzhen, you know. Joe, this is not the first tour you've done. But I mean, I guess what do you take away every time? Like because, you know, you're showing people on camera, off camera, your new city, right? I think like when you need you like this and you go to the tours, obviously there's so much stimulus in Shenzhen. You can only take in so much at a time. I think every time I go there, it's like I notice new things and I get to appreciate it a lot more every time. Yeah. Do you miss Toronto? I think I miss my friends and family in Toronto. Yeah. But I think there's just so much to do here. There's so much to see. You don't really think about it. I don't really think about it. Like there is a little bit of the Toronto food culture that we don't have. Haven't found the jerk chicken here. Yeah. But the benefits far away the negatives. I mean, I gotta say, you know, like as a Chinese person about mainland China, like I just wish more people could see Asia like for what it is right now. Then you can probably seize more opportunities for yourself. What do you think about China maxing? And how come China maxing seems to include Chongqing, Shanghai, maybe some gulao, like old school, this is some parts of China, but not Shenzhen. I think what it is, it's like any, this is social media in general. People will see a video that does really well. And then that becomes the tourist. Yeah. And that's just kind of driven how tourism happens now. It's like, it's all online. Yeah, it's all online. So I think that's why like Chongqing has gotten so much attention. People are like, oh, I'm on this building on the top floor. But I was gonna say, like, you know, as a Chinese person, seeing Chongqing to be so popular amongst foreigners, it's just like online, you know, because Chongqing is not that popular. It is, I mean, obviously, all of us know Chongqing, right? But it's not like the big fish, you know? Like there's so many... I think you got like all of Canada's population in one city. There's so many places like that in China, not just Chongqing. But where else can you make it look like you're eating a subway? Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. So that just tells you like how, I guess, like, you know, there's so many other places to explore in China and people are so fixated on certain things online, which I don't blame them because that's just how it is. But then there's, I wish people are more open-minded. They can, you know, like discover more places in China that's just as cool, if not more cool. I think one part of it is, when you see a lot of people do stuff around Shenzhen, I think, like, people see the drone shows and how massive they are, and the point where it's like everyone just thinks it's AI because it's so far out of people's reality of what is possible, that it's like, oh, it's fake. It's like, it's propaganda. It's like, no, it's how people are living. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even me, I have to admit, so I saw the palm scans for WeChat, but I didn't feel that until I saw why my guy wearing, you know, the yellow outfit do it. And then I was just at the store today and they're like, you know, scan your hand. They were telling me to scan my hand. It's so easy because you just go in the store, you grab whatever and it's like, boop, and you sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. China has 1.4 billion people. We have all these provinces, got all these cultures. They're all very different from each other, right? So it's like, that's not China. It's like a part of China. There's this old saying, I remember, anything that they say about China is true somewhere, but probably not true everywhere. Everywhere, no. It's a gigantic game map, right? It's almost like a continent really in and of itself. And to your point, I actually thought that was a great insight. Like, it's so far ahead that until you come and see it and feel it and almost participate in it, it almost feels fake. Until you come here, until you experience it, it's very unbelievable because it's so far out of the realm of what's possible. Those are two things. I guess my final takeaways, and before we, we just got to do the palms game because I got to see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the kids are super happy. Maybe the happiest kids I've ever seen in my life. They're living life here. And then this is the most futuristic city in the world. But it makes sense that the most futuristic city would also be the happiest for kids. That's true because kids are the future. Yeah. And then you just go like this. That easy. Just walking out. I don't even know if I ever saw that in the sci-fi. I want to say it's like you... I think a lot of people, especially in North America, are always like, oh no, but they have biometrics. Like, if you've traveled to any airport, they already have your biometrics anyways.