Shenzhen became a city only in 1979, when a border county of fishing villages was renamed China's first Special Economic Zone. One generation later it is a megacity of glass towers, hardware markets and metro lines — and, less famously, a place of green mountains, mangrove bays and the wildest beaches in the Pearl River Delta. Add a land border with Hong Kong, and you have the most surprising city in the south: come for the future, stay for the coast.
