Daniel Gauss: New Yorker in Shenzhen

{{{You can click on images to enlarge them...}}} I don't think Donald Trump really understood international economics when he complained about trade imbalances between the US and other major economies. Of course if you have the number 1 economy in the word you will import a lot of stuff which is more cheaply produced elsewhere and export the expensive stuff. If you import more than export, it is really no big deal. In fact, I recall an economics professor saying it can be good for your own consumers and economy. In Shenzhen, a city that now has more billionaires than New York City, you have rabid importers of American and Western luxury items. These are the status symbols here. I once took a snapshot of the inside of a KFC in Shenzhen to show my brother how similar and different it was from American KFCs and I accidentally snapped a photo of part of the parking lot. My brother wrote back saying, "My God - who goes to KFC in that city? You have 5 Audis, 4 BMWs, 6 Mercedes Benze...

  This is one view from the top of Nanshan Mountain in Shenzhen. I am quite tickled that I accidentally caught a dragonfly in the image - dragonflies are ubiquitous in Shenzhen as the city was built on a swamp and is close to the ocean. If cities had logos or brand images, Shenzhen's would have to be a dragonfly...or a BMW...or a designer bag. In New York City I was your typical culture-vulture and there were a huge amount of cultural events to participate in, often for little money. I could go to free art gallery openings, get into museums for little money, go to recitals at Juliard, see foreign films at several movie venues, attend off-off Broadway theater productions, listen in at poetry readings...Or, I could stay home and read - buying used books from Salvation Army thrift stores was a favorite activity of mine. Shenzhen is a new city, only about 42 years old, and the priority for its development has been economics more than culture. The one really good thing in Shenzhen, for ...