Happy New Year from Shenzhen!
Happy 2020, Happy New Year, and Happy New Decade! We celebrated this special occasion in a very chill and low-key way. It’s funny, in my early and mid-20s and especially when I was single, I definitely would’ve gone out to a club or bar but now, I am perfectly content and should I say somewhat relieved (?) to spend it the way we did.
Originally, we were looking forward to the fireworks over the Hong Kong skyline but sadly due to the protests and security concerns, the fireworks were cancelled. So we thought, why not use this opportunity and day off and explore another city! Not to mention it’s only a 15 min. high-speed train ride from Kowloon West Station. How incredible is that?!
We booked a very nice 5-star hotel in Futian District of Shenzhen and took full advantage of its wonderful indoor heated swimming pool and hot tub, both New Year’s Eve afternoon and New Year’s morning. So relaxing for my bad posture neck and shoulder muscles…and one thing I love about nice hotels in China is the breakfast buffet is always SO AMAZING!!! Absolutely delightful with various pastries, yogurts, fresh fruits (they even had longan!) fresh juices, coffee, noodle bar, Chinese stir fry, salads, bacon, sausages, you name it!
The only somewhat disappointing part was I wanted to go somewhere nice for New Year’s Eve dinner but because I don’t know which apps to use to book reservations in mainland and also don’t have WeChat Pay it was pretty difficult to do and all the nice restaurants had 1 hour plus waiting at 8:30pm! So we walked around the “hip” part of Futian where a lot of restaurants and few bars are and found a Hubei Restaurant. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either and the worst is there were 2 tables of really drunk middle aged groups celebrating and was obnoxiously loud!
But afterwards such an amazing thing happened! On our way back to the hotel from the mediocre dinner, I heard continuous “meowing” noises that sounded like a baby kitten. We followed the sound and yes, it was indeed a cute white and grey kitten that looked like it was about 2 weeks old! So small and adorable, hiding under an air-conditioning unit outside of an old office building that is located to a nightclub of all things. It was so so cute and so lost! If we were in Hong Kong, I would’ve just rescued it for sure! It kept on meowing and looked really hungry and sad, and when we tried to get close to it, it was trying to run away by climbing up the staircase. But it was too weak and small so it kept falling down. So sad! I almost cried…
Feeling bad for the kitten and thought that it would be hungry, we went to a nearby convenient store to get a sausage for it. And luckily it was still there when we returned! It was scared to approach us at first but afterwards it came out from the air-conditioning and took a few bites from the sausage. Just when we were happy that it was able to get some food, we saw a big cat crawling out from the window where the air-conditioning pipe was connected to. Must’ve been the kitten’s mother but what a terrible mom! It meowed at the kitty for a few minutes and came down, picked her up, and climbed up the air-conditioning pipe back into the window. Shortly after, we went back to our hotel room to spend the last few hours of 2019.
The entire city had no New Year’s Eve vibe at all other than the fact that restaurant lines were super long with all the young couples and the bars and one club we walked passed seemed full, again with young couples. But no decoration, no special events related to the theme at all. We were thinking of maybe going out at first but being tired and chilled-out, we ended up buying a bottle of jack and went back to our hotel room to celebrate with the TV in the background with New Year’s Eve themed concerts in the background. As the countdown happened, nothing at all were going on outside of our room. No fireworks, no light shows, nothing! But we still had a good time - although, I can’t lie, I felt a little bit like I was back in college and making an alcohol run at Kimbark’s when we went to go by the bottle of Jack (LOL!)
And that was our New Year’s Eve!
We enjoyed New Year’s Day by going to a cat cafe, Meow Garden and walking around the OCT Loft Creative Culture Culture Park that had a lot of interesting graffiti, exhibits, shops, bookstores, and restaurant cafes. It reminded me so much of Industry City in Brooklyn. Super hipster!
The Meow Garden (喵公馆) took forever to find, in the 2nd floor of an office building. It was a bit disappointing because it was very cute as a cafe but not so nice as a cat cafe. All the cats were in a small glass room and sleeping! Anti-climatic. Nonetheless, I felt very relaxed and inspired by all the creative and hipster elements from that day and can’t ask for a better way to kick off the New Year!
Feel like I need to explore Shenzhen a bit more for a full on post dedicated to it. Consider that on my 2020 to-do list!
