Before the Skyscrapers: What Shenzhen Looked Like 50 Years Ago

If you hopped into a time machine this second and zapped yourself 50 years into the past, you would not recognize the place we now call Shenzhen. There would be no glass skyscrapers poking the clouds, no glowing smartphone screens, no bustling shopping malls full of toy stores and bubble tea shops. Instead, you’d stand on a dirt path lined with small bamboo and wood stilt houses, smell salt from the wide, clear Shenzhen River, and hear the sound of roosters crowing and fishermen mending their nets instead of car horns honking. This was Shenzhen in the early 1970s: a tiny, quiet cluster of fishing villages and rice fields, home to just 300,000 people, most of whom made their living catching fish or growing rice, sweet potatoes, and water chestnuts in the muddy soil.

Ten-year-old Ah

If you hopped into a time machine this second and zapped yourself 50 years into the past, you would not recognize the place we now call Shenzhen. There would be no glass skyscrapers poking the clouds, no glowing smartphone screens, no bustling shopping malls full of toy stores and bubble tea shops. Instead, you’d stand on a dirt path lined with small bamboo and wood stilt houses, smell salt from the wide, clear Shenzhen River, and hear the sound of roosters crowing and fishermen mending their nets instead of car horns honking. This was Shenzhen in the early 1970s: a tiny, quiet cluster of fishing villages and rice fields, home to just 300,000 people, most of whom made their living catching fish or growing rice, sweet potatoes, and water chestnuts in the muddy soil.

Ten-year-old Ah Ming pressed his calloused palm flat against the rough bamboo floor of his stilt house, feeling the cool morning breeze drift in through the slatted walls. The Shenzhen River glimmered gold in the early sunlight, and the distant crow of a rooster from the neighbor’s yard cut through the soft hum of insects buzzing over the marshy fields behind the village. His grandma was already stirring a pot of millet porridge over the small wood fire in the corner of the room, the savory smell of salted dried fish wafting through the space to mix with the salty river air. “Grandpa’s already out on the river with his net,” she said, not looking up from the pot. “You’d better grab your school bag if you want to make it to class on time today — the dirt path gets muddy fast after last night’s drizzle.”

Ah Ming’s school bag was a faded blue cloth sack his mom had sewn from an old pair of work pants. Inside, there was only a chipped bamboo pencil, a small piece of slate for writing, and a crumpled stack of old newspaper pages he used for practice. Breakfast was plain: a bowl of warm millet porridge, a small piece of salted dried fish that grandpa had caught the day before, and a few leaves of stir-fried bok choy from the tiny vegetable garden behind the house. His little sister, Mei Mei, who was only 6, sat on the floor next to him, picking the bones out of her fish and giggling when a tiny fish scale stuck to her cheek. “Today’s fish is extra tasty,” she said, holding up a small, silvery fish she’d pulled from the pot. “Grandpa caught a whole net full last night!”

By the time Ah Ming left the house, the sun was high enough to burn the last of the dew off the dirt path. He ran most of the way to the village school, his rubber sandals (made from old car tires, just like all the other kids’ shoes) slapping against the mud. Halfway there, he heard a familiar voice calling his name: “Ah Ming! Wait up!” It was Ah Hua, the girl who lived in the next village over, whose family grew the sweetest lychees in the whole county. Her pockets were bulging with bright red lychees, and she held one out to him as she ran to catch up. “My dad picked these last night,” she said. “They’re extra sweet this year.” The lychee was juicy and sugary, and the juice ran down Ah Ming’s chin as he bit into it, making Ah Hua laugh.

Their village school was a single room made of rammed earth and brick, with a thatched roof that leaked when it rained hard. There was only one teacher, Mr. Li, who had finished 6th grade in the county town and come back to teach the village kids. He taught all four grades at once: first he’d teach the 1st graders how to write their Chinese characters, then he’d give math problems to the 2nd graders, then read a story to the 3rd and 4th graders, all while the younger kids practiced writing on their slates. There were no desks, just long wooden benches that all the kids sat on together. The “playground” was a flat dirt patch outside the classroom, where they played hopscotch (drawn with white chalk Mr. Li brought from the town once a month), rolled hoops made of old bicycle tires, and chased frogs in the irrigation ditch that ran past the school.

When school let out at noon, Ah Ming didn’t go straight home. He walked down to the riverbank where grandpa’s wooden fishing boat was tied to a tree. Grandpa was already there, mending a tear in his nylon fishing net, his dark skin weathered from years of working in the sun. “Help me pull the net up, will you, boy?” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Together, they heaved the heavy net out of the river, and it was full of wriggling small fish, crabs, and a few medium-sized sea bass. “Not bad for a morning’s work,” grandpa said, sorting the catch into two bamboo baskets. “We’ll eat the bass tonight, and take the small fish and crabs to the market tomorrow to sell for salt and pencils.”

The market was held every three days in the small town of Shenzhen Market, which is now the heart of Luohu District. Back then, it was just a few rows of wooden stalls selling dried fish, fresh vegetables, bamboo baskets, and small goods brought over from Hong Kong: plastic hair clips, bubble gum, cheap flashlights. Ah Ming had been saving up his allowance (10 cents a week, given to him by his dad who worked in Hong Kong) for two weeks to buy a pink plastic hair clip for Mei Mei, who had been begging for one every time they walked past the stall that sold them. When he handed it to her that night, she screamed with joy and ran to show grandma, clipping it into her pigtails and spinning around in circles to make it bounce.

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🎮 Guess the Old Photo!

Look at the photo printed on this page (it’s a real photo taken in 1973!). What do you think this place is? > [Photo description: A wide, flat field dotted with small mud huts, water buffalo grazing in the distance, and a narrow dirt path winding through rows of green rice plants.] A. A park in Shenzhen today B. The site of the Ping An Finance Centre 50 years ago C. A beach in Hong Kong *Flip to the answer page at the back of the book to check if you’re right!* </sidebar>

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💡 Fun Fact

The Ping An Finance Centre, which is 599 meters (1,965 feet) tall and the tallest building in Shenzhen today, sat right in the middle of a rice paddy field in 1973. Farmers grew rice and water chestnuts on the exact spot where people now work in offices on the 100th floor! If you stood in the middle of that rice field back then, the closest “tall building” would have been a 2-story village watchtower less than 1 kilometer away. </fun-fact>

Life in the village was simple, and almost everything was made by hand. Grandma wove bamboo baskets for carrying fish and vegetables, grandpa carved wooden floats for his fishing nets from fallen tree branches, and mom sewed all their clothes from old fabric scraps. Their house had no running water, so Ah Ming had to walk 5 minutes to the village well every evening to carry two buckets of water back home for cooking and washing. There was no indoor bathroom — everyone used a public outhouse at the edge of the village, which was especially scary to walk to at night when the moon was hidden behind clouds. Electricity had come to the village a few years earlier, but it was unreliable: it would go out for