What Even Is Dongguan? A Traveler's Confused Notes
so here i am in dongguan. don't really know how i ended up here exactly, but it's happening. just woke up, looked outside, and thought "well, i guess this is the day."
first thing you should know, i just checked and it's...there right now, hope you like that kind of thing. the weather's doing its thing at 18.75°C, feels like 18.64°C, which is basically the same but you know how weather reports are always slightly off. humidity's at 75%, so it's that kind of damp where you feel like you need a shower even though you just had one. whatever.
so this place is called dongguan. sounds like something you'd order at a coffee shop, right? "i'll have a dongguan, extra foam." turns out it's a prefecture-level city in guangdong province. fancy words for saying it's a big deal in southern china. sits at coordinates 23.020536°N, 113.751762°E, which means nothing to me but sounds impressive if you're into geography.
the place is huge. like, 2,465 square kilometers of land plus 82.57 square kilometers of sea area. whatever that means, it's big. they say it's geographically diverse with hills in the east and flatter stuff in the west. 27% water and 25% forests. basically, they're trying to tell me it's not just concrete everywhere, but let's be real, it's mostly concrete.
someone told me that dongguan is called the "factory of the world." which honestly sounds a bit terrifying. like, do they just pump out stuff 24/7? i haven't seen any factories yet, but maybe i'm just not looking in the right places. or maybe they're hidden behind all these buildings.
remember how i said it's a big deal? turns out it's positioned in this pearl river delta thing, which sounds important. it's about 50km south of guangzhou and 90km north of shenzhen. if you get bored, guangzhou, huizhou, and shenzhen are just a short drive away. hong Kong and macau are kinda close too, like 47 and 48 nautical miles respectively. whatever a nautical mile is, it's not far.
the population here is insane. 10,466,625 people according to some 2020 census. that's like, a lot of people. no wonder it feels crowded all the time. they say it's one of china's most populous cities, which is saying something because china has cities. like, a lot of cities.
the name dongguan apparently means "eastern bulrushes" or "east city." which is weird because i haven't seen any bulrushes, and it's not really that east of anything i can tell. but what do i know? i'm just a tourist trying not to get lost.
the place has a coastline of 115.98 kilometers, which is fancy talk for saying it's got a beach somewhere. probably a crowded one. the climate is humid subtropical, which means it's warm and rainy all the time. average temperature is 22.9°C, which sounds nice until you factor in the humidity.
someone told me that huawei has this campus here called ox horn that opened in 2018 and fits 25,000 employees. 25,000! that's more people than in some towns i've been to. imagine having to find parking for that many people.
the area around songshan lake is supposed to be nice, with some high-tech industrial development zone. i think that's where all the fancy tech companies are. probably not where the regular tourists like me go.
local food is supposed to be good, with lots of seafood from the coastline and fruits like bananas, litchi, longan, and pineapples when they're in season. haven't tried any yet, but i'm hoping they're better than the instant noodles i've been living on.
so yeah, that's dongguan so far. it's big, it's crowded, it's got some history since it became a prefecture-level city back in 1988. the economy here is massive, like CNY 827.86 billion (USD 125.11 billion) as of 2018. which is a lot of zeros. more than i'll ever see in my bank account, that's for sure.
not sure what i'm going to do here tomorrow. maybe explore more. maybe just stay in my room and watch tv. who knows. that's the beauty of travel, right? or maybe it's just a lack of planning. either way, it's an adventure.
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