This may have been the best day yet in Shenzhen. The night before we had a huge ominous black cloud sitting over the city. Around 7:30 pm, the cloudburst came. The winds picked up and a torrent of rain fell in less than 15 minutes. The following morning, I was expecting heat and humidity, but instead the weather was cool and suprisingly clear. These days just don’t exist in China, at least in Shenzhen. It was very much like a late June morning in Seattle. As I’m writing this blog entry, I’m sitting in the outdoor Italian eatery enjoying one of their pizzas (only Peluso’s in Columbus, Georgia can rival it) and it could not be more pleasant. Check out these pictures of the area around where I work taken on this clear day.

This is a view of construction going on near my building. When walking to lunch, it’s frequent to hear loud explosions. I’m not sure if it’s blasting or giant metal beams pounding the ground, but it shakes everything:

In this picture (which is the same picture as above but looking at the horizon instead of the ground), if you look far in the distance you’ll see two white towers that slightly lean. This is a new bridge under construction that leads to Hong Kong:

Here are some views out of the office window. In the zoom shot, you can see the area where I live. It’s just left of the lone, yellowish apartment tower just right of center (that tower also happens to be where Greg, my Polish friend, lives):

Here’s a dense cluster of small buildings. No doubt these will be bulldozed and replaced with much taller ones: