The most common building in Shenzhen is the apartment building (“gong yu”). There are so many apartment high rises in every direction. Makes sense; a city of 12-14 million in its metropolitan area needs to have places for people to live. Here’s a shot of a mid to lower end apartment:

What you see here is quite common: the bars over the windows to prevent mischief from outsiders, little shops underneath and outside, and clothes – clothes are always hanging on every porch! Shenzhen is a humid place too so it’s hard for clothes to dry, probably contributes to the ubiquitous clothes line. Seriously, you see clothes hanging on 9 out of 10 windows, especially in these sorts of apartments (the higher end ones have dryers). Even more stunning are the dormatories at the factories and the construction sites. Companies provide very cheap and rudimentary housing for low-skilled workers. These usually consist of little more than a sleeping area. I know that there are common eating area; I don’t know about bathrooms. But, there are always clothes hanging out of each and every window of these dormatories.

Here’s a shot of higher end apartments, right next to where the shot above was taken:

For the high-end ones, check out my “Tian qi” post.   I really like this next shot. It’s from the 30th floor of a building looking down on to a sea of low-end apartments: