Shenzhen

Nobody comes to Shenzhen for the history, which is exactly why the history is worth finding. The special economic zone was drawn on the map in 1980 over a county of rice fields, oyster beds and Hakka villages, and the city that grew on top of it has no local accent, no settled way of doing things and not much reverence for the past.

Some of it survived anyway. Nantou, marooned in the middle of Nanshan, was the county seat that governed this whole coast — Hong Kong included — for most of sixteen hundred years, and the walled town is still there with a village grown through it. Dapeng, two hours east, is a Ming garrison behind granite gates. Between them the shore runs from mangrove flats full of wintering birds to the fifteen sand beaches of the Dapeng peninsula. The nineties theme parks — Window of the World, Happy Valley, Splendid China — are still going too, and still the right answer if you are travelling with children.

Get around on the metro: six hundred kilometres of it, signed in English, reaching the airport, three of the Hong Kong crossings and most of what follows. The city is long from east to west, so pick a base on a line you will actually use rather than a district that sounds central. Summers are hot, wet and typhoon-prone from July into September; October to December is dry, mild and the reason to come then.

Bao'an (SZX) is on the west coast: metro line 1 into Luohu, line 11 to Futian in about 35 minutes, and a ferry pier next door with sailings straight to Hong Kong airport if you are connecting.

High-speed rail uses two stations. Futian, underground in the middle of the CBD, runs trains to Hong Kong West Kowloon in fourteen minutes. Shenzhen North (metro lines 4, 5 and 6) is the main one: Guangzhou South in about 30 minutes, Changsha three hours, Xiamen three and a half, Shanghai eight.

For Hong Kong on foot, Luohu (end of metro line 1) and Futian (lines 4 and 10) are the quickest, Shenzhen Bay suits anyone heading for Hong Kong airport or the western New Territories, and Huanggang runs around the clock. Take your passport and avoid weekend mornings. Shekou has ferries to Hong Kong airport in about 30 minutes, to Sheung Wan, and to Macau.

Shenzhen has no cuisine of its own, which turns out to be the point: everyone brought theirs and the competition is fierce. Chaoshan food is the strongest presence — beef hotpot where each cut is timed to the second, hand-beaten beef balls, braised goose, and raw marinated seafood for the brave. Hakka cooking (salt-baked chicken, stuffed tofu) is the closest thing to a native kitchen, since the Hakka farmed these hills. Cantonese morning tea is everywhere, and so are Hunan, Sichuan and northeastern places on the ground floor of every tower block. Eat seafood at Shekou or in the villages on the Dapeng peninsula, where you pick from the tanks and pay separately for the cooking. Breakfast is changfen, rice rolls steamed to order; the night ends with tongshui, sweet soups, served until one in the morning.