3 weeks in Shenzhen, 2 weeks at Huawei

So it’s been 10 days staying in a hotel, 10 days living in the apartment, 11 days actually working, and 20 days away from my girls in Beijing.  I’m now back in Beijing for the weekend.

I’ve been in Shenzhen at the perfect time of the year. It’s not the humid summer, nor the few weeks of (mild) winter. It’s been between 20-25 degrees every day, sometimes overcast and sometimes with nice blue skies. The Huawei campus is very nice; many of the buildings are surrounded by trees, some even have lakes, and out building, not one of the prettiest to be honest, still has a 5th - 8th floor garden atrium. We’ve chosen a place to live that overlooks the mountains and a reservoir whilst downstairs has a large outdoor swimming pool, 2 kids’ playgrounds, plenty of grass to lie/play on and many other architecture features. I’m enjoying it already – including my morning runs around the inside of the community, and my 15 minute bike ride to work.

Work is going very well so far, with a great manager, a nice team, and many other capable and experienced people in neighboring departments that I’ll be working (and often eating lunch or having a coffee at the coffee shop in the neighboring building) with. Though there are some fixed rules in terms of arriving and leaving work, the work atmosphere is fairly relaxed and enjoyable, and the job description is shaping up to be what I expected with responsibility, travel, and ownership. I’ve been warned by my boss’s boss that Hua Wei stands for Hard Work – I look forward to it and would rather that than the opposite.

I’m already bewildered by the size of the organization (150,000+ people in 170 countries) and I’m sure there will be a lot of internal people I need to meet and convince, though in my early honeymoon period I’m relishing this! Huawei does many things well, but recognizes there is room for improvement. There are some experienced people and some passionate people. They’re focused on hiring experts, including many foreigners, some of whom I’ve met have been at Huawei between 5-10 years already and still enjoying it, and this shows that they are keen to learn and improve.

I’m slowly learning there is a Huawei way to working with set procedures for creating and managing projects, for example, but it is going to take time to understand all of that. In the meantime I’ve already been to the Huawei University (the training center) three times for some of the trainings that are organized around the topic of sustainable development; and there is another two-day training next week. It’s a very large and very busy training center, and one of our department priorities is to build internal capacity around sustainability management.

Huawei’s business has been doing really well recently – and is forecast to grow rapidly in the next few years. The CEO says all the right things (about being humble, working hard and still thinking we are the underdog, not the giant) whilst the company famously has more than half its workforce in R&D. It’s a very customer-oriented organization which has served it well and enabled the company to grow: listen to the customer, let their requirements help us grow and improve etc. Its one reason why our sustainability performance is strong in many aspects: it’s been required by (and supported by) the customers.  It’s certainly got room to improve and everyone recognizes that, which is also good. I’m looking forward to it.

The biggest challenge so far is living apart from my girls. I have had a great couple of days with all three of them but it really goes fast!

Shenzhen first impressions

I've been here 2 weeks now, of which i've been living around the Huawei campus which is in the suburbs. It is only a 30 min bus ride downtown, or shorter by taxi (though at rush hour, both might take longer) and I've made it downtown a few times to meet friends for dinner (and to do a health check which is required to change my work permit).

Downtown Shenzhen is split in a few different areas but as expected there is a lot of new, tall office buildings and shopping malls, though further towards the border with Hong Kong you have the older buildings. There's some nice parks and a decent subway with a few lines (it's growing, and there should be a new line opening next to our apartment in 18 months or so). As most people now know Shenzhen was a tiny fishing village 30-odd years ago and now is a city of 10m people or so. It seems it has been planned quite well with a good highway system to get around and good interchanges and intentional placement of things like exhibition centres, universities etc.

Originally Shenzhen also had a border around it as it had different economic/tax systems compared to the rest of China (it was the "experiment" for China's economic reforms). Though that border no longer exists there are reminders of it, for example, one of the main highways heading north out of the center through the hills still has a big checkpoint there, which is not used. The highway just splits in the middle and goes around it, and the bus stop sits next to it - you walk through a ghost building full of customs boxes and railings for queues that have no been used for several years. Because of this there are other oddities too - two different colors of taxis, the green ones can only go in the suburbs (outside where the border was) and the red ones can go in the inner city and the suburbs.

No-one that lives here now over the age of 20 was born in Shenzhen. Everyone has moved here since the 80s so you get a real mix of accents (though the majority do seem to be from Southern China) and thankfully everyone speaks Mandarin (the same dialect as in Beijing) rather than Cantonese which neighboring Guangzhou and Hong Kong speak (and dominates around southern China) so that makes life a bit easier (though all Cantonese speakers can speak mandarin too). However it has also led to Shenzhen's reputation as being the crime capital of China (particular due to the high number of migrant workers that are only here short-term) though its probably way better than many Western cities, it does unfortunately mean its less common to just cycle around and leave a bike padlocked up somewhere like in Beijing.

However Shenzhen is actually quite bike friendly with lots of bike paths on the pavements, and a whole system of "Green Paths" which are hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes for more serious biking along the coast, through the hills or elsewhere, and another network of local bike lanes in different districts. Today I took one of the main bike lanes that goes up and over the hill that separates my suburb form downtown. It was a hard ride, but fun and a good way to test how capable my new fold-up bike is! The weather right now is perfect, about 25 degrees and not humid... unfortunately the Summer might be another story, but we'll see.

Shenzhen also has an area where the foreigners live, called Shekou, which has lots of trendy bars and restaurants (much centered around a massive boat placed in a small lake with fountains and accompanying light/music show). It is really convenient there to get a ferry to Hong Kong airport in half an hour (and to Hong Kong itself in an hour) and I guess some people like the sea-views. However it's over an hour commute from my office and more expensive. We're quite happy living a Chinese lifestyle in a beautiful community with 3 playgrounds, a big swimming pool, and lots of grassy areas for the kids to play on (as well as the balcony overlooking the mountains and a reservoir nearby to run around).

Shenzhen seems to have a few key features. One of which is the ridiculous nature of the apartment complexes. Shenzhen is the real estate capital of China. Most of the big real estate companies started here (to build the city from scratch) and made a lot of money here. There are so many ginormous apartment complexes with tends of buildings in each phase (and then some have more than ten phases as the company added more buildings on adjacent land they purchased). Most of the complexes are well designed though.

The second is that outside of the old border, there are a lot of local high streets or villages where the migrant workers live. These little villages haven't changed much in 20 years and are run-down, but cheap and full of atmosphere. Beijing had some too but Shenzhen has lots as they needed (and still need) cheap places for the migrant workers to live. We're going to enjoy exploring these places!

The move

A lot has happened in a month since I last wrote. I wrapped up my work at BSR, moved to Shenzhen, started working at Huawei, and found a new apartment here. Andrea and the girls are still in Beijing for a few months due to Andrea's work but will hopefully move early in the new year, while I'll be going back to Beijing next weekend to see them (and managing other plans so we can see each other every couple of weeks).

The main reason for the move is around the job - which is a really exciting opportunity for me, and hopefully Andrea will be able to make her work benefit from the move too. It might be tough on Hannah to move to a new kindergarten, and we';; likely have to find another nanny for Leah, but we've been open to moving somewhere else for a while since we've been in Beijing a long time. And Shenzhen is a great place - it's cheaper and greener than Beijing. There's no such thing as Winter here and there is less pollution.

We're going to have to adjust our lifestyle that's been fairly fixed in Beijing (going to parks, cycling everywhere, certain favorite restaurants, of course certain groups of friends) but we'll manage. We know a few people down here who i've already met up with and of course through our work we'll make many new friends (Huawei's campus here has 40,000+ working there for a start)!

At first it does seem strange to have different routines (how to get to work, how to get to kindergarten, where the local shop is etc) and it was really hard (and tiring) finding an apartment and trying to work out what is more important (a kindergarten that is 2 mins walk vs 10 mins walk; a local high st with tens of restaurants vs a few restaurants down stairs; a subway 5 mins walk away or 2 20 mins away; and more on bus stops, balconies, number of bedrooms, a bath, a study, a big kitchen, a swimming pool, a kids playground, and many other things). Eventually we made a decision and we'll see how things work out!