Luohu: the Border Crossing and Old Shenzhen

Shenzhen's oldest commercial district, and the market town that gave the city its name. It began as the Shenzhen market town - villages like Chikan, Luohu, Getang and Hubei set up a market between them in the mid-Ming - and when 'Shenzhen' became the name of the city in 1979, the market was renamed Dongmen Old Street. What you walk through today is mostly the 1999 rebuild and the current one: since March 2024 it has been the only pedestrian street in Shenzhen in the Ministry of Commerce upgrade pilot, renovated 'without closing the street or shutting the shops', with 21 building facades redone and six Lingnan arcade houses - Xihua Gong, Yaohua Lou, Wenshan Lou - given careful repairs by the end of 2025. It is a local shopping street, not a heritage quarter: 80.7 million visits in 2025, with young visitors over 70 per cent of them. Vehicles are banned from the whole zone 07:00-24:00.

A 4A-graded botanical garden at the foot of Wutong Mountain, opened in 1988, and the quietest large space in a city that has very few. The supervising bureau lists it as open 06:00-21:30 with ticketed entry only between 08:00 and 18:00 - before eight and after six it is free - at 15 yuan for adults, 10 yuan on public holidays. It holds 13,116 taxa as of the end of 2025, including one of the world's largest cycad collections (240-plus species) and over 1,300 ferns, roughly a tenth of all fern species on earth; the fossil forest, the desert glasshouse and the bald cypresses that turn red in December and January are what people come for. Hongfa Temple sits inside the grounds, eight minutes by the 3 yuan shuttle from the gate. Two practical catches: e-tickets are sold only through two WeChat official accounts, and the palaeontology museum is shut for refurbishment with no reopening date.

The 69th floor of Shun Hing Square on Shennan East Road - billed as Asia's tallest building when it topped out in 1996, and the only observation deck in Shenzhen that made the city's list of graded scenic spots (3A). The operator lists 89 yuan full price, 45 yuan for children 1.2-1.5 m and over-65s, 09:00-21:00 with last admission 20:30; ticket sales and online-ticket exchange stop at 20:20. What you get for the money is not a glass floor or a skywalk but a themed exhibition floor - fifteen zones on Shenzhen and Hong Kong, built in the 1990s and still recognisably of that decade - wrapped around a 360-degree window. Its one real advantage over the taller, newer decks in Futian is where it stands: at the Luohu end of Shennan Road, looking south towards the river and the New Territories.

A Lingnan arcade building on Nanqing Street in the middle of the Dongmen shopping crowds, and one of the places in Luohu with a pre-1980 story to tell. It was the Hong'an Hotel, built in the Republican era; in late November 1938 General Ye Ting set up his headquarters here to organise resistance in the region; it was wound up that December. It became a municipal protected heritage site in 1983, was transferred to Shenzhen Museum in 2012 and reopened in December 2017 with a permanent exhibition, 'General Ye Ting and Shenzhen', in three sections. Free, no booking since 22 July 2024, and - the detail that matters for foreign visitors - Shenzhen Museum's own visitor notice says holders of foreign passports may use the green channel on production of their document. The building is small: 240 sqm of site, 794 sqm of floor space, capacity a hundred people at a time.

A working Chan monastery inside Fairy Lake Botanical Garden, and a good illustration of how new Shenzhen is: planned from 1983, it broke ground on 1 July 1985 and opened to the public on 31 August 1990 - the city's urban-management bureau calls it the first temple built in mainland China after 1949 - and its Buddha images were consecrated in June 1992. Its website is published jointly by the Shenzhen and Luohu Buddhist associations and the temple; there is no temple ticket, but you are inside the botanical garden, so the garden's entry rules apply first. The temple's own published hours are 08:00-18:00. It is not a museum piece - the notice board carries a full calendar of dharma assemblies, including seven-day Water and Land Rites (the 2026 autumn one ran 20-26 August) and Chan and Pure Land retreats in winter - and at Chinese New Year the whole hillside goes to booked timed entry under a district government order.

Shenzhen's newest land crossing, opened for goods in August 2020 and for passengers in February 2023, and the main crossing for the eastern side of the city. Hours are 07:00-22:00. On the Hong Kong side it is called Heung Yuen Wai, and the useful detail is that you do not need a train: buses B7, B8 and 59S leave from the ground floor on the Hong Kong side straight to Fanling, Sheung Shui, Tai Po and Sha Tin. On the Shenzhen side Metro Line 2 terminates at Liantang Kou'an, exit A3 by Lanting International Plaza on Luosha Road. It was built as the eastern half of a deliberate 'west in, west out; east in, east out' split of cross-border traffic, which is why it is the sensible crossing if you are heading for Yantian, Dapeng or Xianhu rather than into the city centre. Like every land crossing here, it is not a 240-hour visa-free transit port.

The double-deck footbridge over the Shenzhen River that most visitors from Hong Kong walk across: MTR East Rail to Lo Wu, up the escalator, through immigration, and you are in China. The port office lists it as 06:30-24:00, with 190 inspection lanes (115 self-service, 75 staffed) and a stated aim of keeping the queue under 30 minutes; the daily average is about 170,000 crossings. Two things to know before you plan around it. First, Luohu is not one of the ports where 240-hour visa-free transit applies - in Shenzhen that is Bao'an airport and Shekou; if you are crossing here you need a visa or another visa-free basis. Second, the port's midnight closing is not the constraint: the last East Rail train from Admiralty towards Lo Wu leaves at 23:01 (Hung Hom 23:07), so the Hong Kong side shuts first. Arrivals come out onto a block that also holds Shenzhen railway station, Luohu bus station and two metro lines.

The quiet crossing between Luohu and Liantang, open 07:00-22:00, and the numbers show why: the port office puts its daily passenger flow at a little over 4,000, against Luohu's 170,000, across 18 inbound and 18 outbound lanes. Opened in 1978 - one of only two land crossings Shenzhen had before reform and opening - it is still mostly a goods port, the road by which Hong Kong gets its live and fresh produce, and it is the end of national highway G107. On the Hong Kong side it is Man Kam To, reached by the Wah Tung and Yue Gang cross-boundary coaches from Sheung Shui Landmark North rather than by rail. Like every land crossing here, it is not a 240-hour visa-free transit port. Metro Line 9 Wenjin station is about 350 m away.

The station right beside the Luohu crossing, and the one most easily confused with the other three. Founded in 1911 and rebuilt in 1990-91 to four platforms and eight tracks, it is the Guangzhou-Shenzhen intercity station: over 80 intercity departures a day to Guangzhou East, Guangzhou and Guangzhou Baiyun, the fastest non-stop taking 63 minutes. It also runs conventional long-distance trains and, since 10 January 2022, some high-speed services - so calling it 'the slow-train station' is now wrong; what is true is that the national high-speed hub is Shenzhen North, and trains to Hong Kong West Kowloon leave from Futian or Shenzhen North, not here. Since 1 July 2025 intercity, conventional and high-speed passengers share one entrance and one second-floor waiting hall, with gate 6 fixed for intercity. The cross-boundary through train to Hung Hom that once left from here is not running: the port office lists the Shenzhen railway port as 'suspended'.

A few blocks of towers north of Dongmen where a very large share of China's gold jewellery is designed, cast and traded. The district government's own figures: close to 7,000 registered gold-and-jewellery companies in Luohu, more than ten wholesale markets over 10,000 sqm each, about 70,000 people employed, annual turnover over 100 billion yuan, and roughly half of China's wholesale gold-jewellery trade. The six trading centres north of Shuibei metro station - Teli, Shuibei International, Shuibei No.1, Jinzuo, Yinzuo and Xinglong - have been physically linked through a basement level since September 2021 into what the district calls the largest gold-jewellery trading complex in the country. It is a wholesale district that also retails: bring a question, not a shopping list. Prices here are set by the gram plus a workmanship fee, and the gram price moves with the market, so it is a place to understand how the trade works rather than to hunt bargains blind.