So, Huaqiangbei is the heart of Shenzhen’s maker culture. However, China Merchants Shekou has upped the production ante, establishing “net valley (网谷)”, a company slash investment strategy to produce and deploy the latest in digital gadgetry. Friday morning, we visited their showroom in order to learn about techno-possibilities and brainstorm events for the May cultural industries fair. The point of all this investment is to stimulate creativity (创新). And yet. I kept thinking how the form of contact–a tour and a meeting–made it all seem ordinary, despite the fact that we held our meeting in a room that went from being a library to a bird’s eye view of mountain tops. If my impressions of banal sci-fi seem familiar, it’s because much of this technology was first exhibited at the Shenzhen New Media Exhibition.

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