
The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen (2016) [pdf] - BerislavLopac
https://bunniefoo.com/bunnie/essential/essential-guide-shenzhen-web.pdf
======
FpUser
This is my friend's story. He owns a company that designs and manufactures
various electro-mechanical things. So he went there to check quality of his
order that was getting ready for shipping. All went nice and shiny and then as
he was about to head back to an airport he mentioned that he now has to find
where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. So
the the owner said wait a min. Dials his buddy with another factory that
happen to manufacture batteries and explains the task. So they set up the line
and in 3 hours he had the whole amount made and put in crates.

Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It
is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind
stealing the design and doing it themselves.

~~~
jstanley
> Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China.
> It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind
> stealing the design and doing it themselves.

It is possible that these things are related.

Everything is so efficient because rent-seeking on "intellectual property" is
not an option. You have to execute well or somebody else will do it better.

~~~
tsukurimashou
it reminds me of the early / glory days of piracy. I've seen a lot of kids
just torrenting software for their needs and just getting started with video
game programming, music, or other fields. What I liked about it, is that you
could just get started with something right away, with the right tools without
having to think about the financial aspect of things.

Last time I check unreal engine works a bit like that, it is free to download
and use as long as you don't make more than x amount of money per year, when
you start making decent money you'll give a percentage to Epic. I wish more
things would work this way.

~~~
yummypaint
Autodesk finally wisened up to this and has fully featured educational
licenses for free

~~~
creative-coder
Autodesk's actions are most probably a response to feeling the heat from
stable, multi-faceted & open source Modelling, Animation and Sculpting tool,
Blender which is completely free, receiving considerable attention from
industry recently (after v2.8)

------
k_sze
Even if the maps are outdated, I think the point-to-translate pages serve as a
really nice, condensed English<->Chinese glossary of electronics.

This helps not only foreigners, but also native Chinese like myself who have
received their higher education in English. You see, I usually can’t hold a
conversation about electronics or computer science in Chinese, even though my
mother tongue is Cantonese and I’m generally fluent in Mandarin.

------
canada_dry
Was fortunate to meet and spend some time with Andrew (Bunnie) a couple years
ago.

The guy is just a stellar nice person. Generally speaking he's usually the
smartest guy in the room yet he's totally approachable and down-to-earth.

One of his gifts is a Feynman-like ability to explain complex topics in a
down-to-earth manner.

If you get a chance to hear him speak/present, take it.

~~~
shaklee3
I remember him from the original Xbox hacking. I believe he was the one that
originally figured out how to load custom software on it, and maybe even got
sued?

~~~
henriks
The book he wrote about this is freely downloadable these days at
[https://nostarch.com/xbox](https://nostarch.com/xbox) .

------
eindiran
Can anyone who has been to an electronics market in Shenzhen (or visited
Shenzhen in general) comment on what their experience was like?

~~~
nippoo
I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like
it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left
with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB
power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few
Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had
his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered
the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered
a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts
and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written
more about it ([https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-
huaqia...](https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-
the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronic-market) is the classic article) but if
you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.

~~~
userbinator
_my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student
literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a
BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)_

One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics
markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist
in the West is how much more _interactive_ the whole experience is. I once
went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the
serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time
visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it
apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was.
They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling
us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the
same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us
that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several
stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people
waiting too.

It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky
to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told
what the problem was.

~~~
wst_
I've got very similar experience in Akihabara, Tokyo.

Trivial thing happened to my headphones. The wire broke very close to the jack
plug because of the frequent bending. There was a young guy there, I told him
what happened using my broken Japanese, he patiently listened, took the
headphones, made some basic check on them, took my phone number and told me to
come in 30 minutes. In 20 minutes I got call that it's done. When it came to
payment he asked me how much, I think, I should pay. I've been oblivious so he
proposed 500 JPY, which is close to nothing, considering that I've had no
tools and spare parts.

London, UK - the same situation happened. I've been told to throw it away.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
UK spent over 50 years looking down on "doing" trades, the engineers,
technicians, repairers etc, and been brainwashed that converting to a service
economy is better for all. Industry and manufacturing was closed as a matter
of policy, even in sectors we still competed well.

UK has destroyed the supply chains, the experience, or the ability to train or
employ such people any more except in very exceptional cases. End result is
few have even _seen_ a jack plug or mains plug that's not moulded or would
know where to start.

So we have shops that have no idea how to fix a broken plug or cable, and
jewellers that have to return a watch to the manufacturer for a battery
change. I'd guess in 1980-1990 most shops on Tottenham Court Road could have
soldered a new one, along with most similar shops around the country now
they're all just box shifters.

~~~
Fradow
This is not specific to UK, I'd hazard that the whole western world is like
that.

You litteraly cannot find ANY electronics shop in Paris (there were still a
few ones a few years ago), and no one apart from some non-profits initiative
is willing to even open a piece of electronics to do some simple repairs that
involve soldering (the only repair being done is changing a part on
phones/tablets/computers).

It's really depressing, because a lot repairs are really simple (unsolder a
capacitor that is visibly broken, solder a new one in, or even replace a fuse
in audio equipment) and instead those objects are trashed, contributing to the
growing ecological problems.

That state of affair comes from both an economic lens (manpower is too costly
compared to buying a new one), and a skill shortage (people watch me like an
alien when I do those simple repairs)

~~~
BrandoElFollito
If you are in Versailles there is Vart Électronique. I once needed a cable or
something and thought I would need to order it on AliExpress.

I gave them a call and 15 min of biking later I had what I needed for a few
euros.

The shop is an inscriptible mess but the guys running it are ok.

------
dang
Discussed before it existed:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369)

A bit more from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154)

------
contingencies
Actual hardware R&D focused business owner in the PRD here. 18 years China.
IMHO the 'essential guide' is just buy stuff online: barely anyone actually
physically visits stores anymore. Certain parties make money and cred by
claiming being in physical proximity to a bunch of cables and parts in HQB is
somehow awesome, and in a minority of cases walking around might save half a
day, but really you can just order ahead or use your own stock if you have a
clue which area you'll be working in, and you'll have saved 10x half a day in
rent by not being there. Even if you buy stuff online many stores will give
you their business card, WeChat or QQ account and you can just ask them to
send stuff pronto on subsequent orders, cutting Taobao or whatever online
platform out of the equation. Shenzhen is _very_ expensive for real estate and
salaries. If you want to go scrappy, live somewhere cheap in China (Yunnan is
awesome) and use Taobao. If you want to go scrappy and fast, live somewhere
cheap in the PRD and use Taobao. (There are minor electronics ecosystems
around Xi'an, Chengdu, Zhejiang and Beijing, too.) No need to even visit
Shenzhen, although outer Shenzhen / Dongguan is still a great place to acquire
lots of types of industrial equipment, IMHO inner Shenzhen / HQB really just
isn't anymore. Hardware startups should go somewhere cheap to iterate. The
cheapest and cleanest well connected major area of the PRD is Zhuhai, where we
moved from Shenzhen 1.5 years ago. I go back about once a month for outlying
factories.

------
mysterypie
Is there any way to visit Shenzhen without submitting your fingerprints to the
Chinese government? I've heard that everyone gets their fingers scanned at
entry these days even if you never had to submit fingerprints with your visa
application. Is that correct?

~~~
mlacks
I’ve been to China three time in the past three years; I’ve never had to be
fingerprinted.

~~~
spats1990
Anecdata but I got fingerprinted just passing through Shanghai airport in
transit at the end of 2018.

I haven't visited the US or transited through a US airport but again
anecdotally I've heard this happens there too (even in transit).

~~~
Tijdreiziger
I'm not sure about transit but when I (EU citizen) have been to the US they
took all ten of my fingerprints, and this has also been the experience of my
friends.

(Incidentally, my own government doesn't even have any of my fingerprints...)

~~~
mschuster91
I wouldn't be so certain that your government does not have your
fingerprint... if it's European you can bet that at least your secret services
have it as part of "we spy on your citizens, you on ours" agreement.

~~~
neuronic
Of course they do - at least in Germany. Your biometrics are part of your
personal ID and passport. It is only thumb and index finger though plus facial
scan / photo.

~~~
mschuster91
The prints are only stored on the passport/ID card and not indexed by the
government (although there are plans to change this)

------
yellow_lead
In the introduction, they lightly recommend VPNs. I would recommend using a
SOCKS5 proxy instead if you're in China and looking to get past the firewall.
Shadowsocks is purpose built for this [1]. You can easily set it up on a
droplet or vultr before you travel. If it gets blocked, changing the port
number can usually suffice.

[1]
[https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html](https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html)

~~~
m0th87
You can also just use a phone plan with roaming, as they aren't affected by
the firewall. The guide says it's pricey, but Google Fi doesn't charge extra
for roaming. I got around China last year with it, including some fairly
remote parts.

~~~
derefr
Or stop by Hong Kong first and get your SIM there (from a mainland ISP.)
_Because_ it's a mainland ISP, you'll have coverage anywhere in China without
roaming; and since the SIM was issued for Hong Kong, it won't route through
the Great Firewall, even when in the mainland.

------
betimsl
There's a game on steam called SHENZHEN I/O. I think that if you finish that
game and study this document, you can implement anything you want really :)

------
plq
> (...) And then there are the pronunciation subtleties, such as 芯片号, “xīn
> piàn hào” (which means an “IC’s part number” (literally “core flat item’s
> number”), which with misplaced accents sounds like 性偏好, “xìng piān hào”
> which means “sexual preference”. No native speaker would ever mispronounce
> or confuse the two, but a foreigner going up to a local asking “What’s your
> chip’s part number?” could be heard as “What’s your sexual preference?” if
> mispronounced and taken out of context.

I love how every language out there is choke-full of these :) Though so far
nothing beats the importance of punctuation in "Come on, people"[1]

[1]: As heard in one of John oliver's episodes

~~~
rladd
Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on
their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning
"packed full".

~~~
plq
Pun unintentionally intended, then :) Thanks for the note.

------
nneonneo
Oh, this is wonderful! I'm learning Chinese right now - conversationally
capable, but I have no grasp on jargon (especially electronics). This is a
great guide.

There are some issues with the pinyin transliterations - they seem to be
machine-generated rather than human-generated: there's some errors, like
mixups between chang/zhang for 长, and weirdness like "yao yao ling" for 110
where we'd usually use "yi bai yi shi". But technically these wouldn't matter
much in a point-and-translate context because neither party would be paying
attention to the pinyin.

Anyway, aside from that nit - I suspect I will be using part of it as a study
guide for my Mandarin learning. Thanks, Bunnie!

~~~
georgebaily
Yao yao ling is just what everyone says - it's a phone number. You don't read
it as "one hundred and ten"

~~~
nneonneo
Ah, I’m sorry. I should have clarified further - I was referring to the
transliteration of “110V” as “yao yao ling dian ya” - “one one zero volts”. In
that instance the transliteration is incorrect as one would usually use “one
hundred and ten” (yi bai yi shi).

------
xiii1408
This is extremely topical for me, as I'm visiting the Shenzhen electronics
market for the first time today. :D

My Chinese is okay, although I don't know any of the technical terms. Thanks
for the reference! Looking forward to experiencing this firsthand.

------
paulkrush
I just went. It's really darn cool, but if I lived there I would still buy
everything online, except the shipping would be faster!

I can't believe how many e-bikes were there. Also when you go the sound of
shipping tape is everywhere.

------
_e
In Chicago, there are many many very talented Chinese engineering students.
Having two hard copies of this guide in the office has helped me recover from
some miscommunications very quickly.

~~~
hettygreen
Why two copies??

~~~
_e
Prevents a bottleneck with access to information.

------
wst_
I'm not that interested in the place and electronics per se but I've found the
intro really interesting in terms of culture and language. Great read.

------
colanderman
I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches
on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for
those just casually interested in the topic.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-
hardware...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware-
hacker)

------
bedah
Great, thanks for the link :)

I was looking for exactly this book in german book stores, but local
bookstores here do not have books from No Starch Press in their program:
[https://nostarch.com/shenzhen](https://nostarch.com/shenzhen)

I never buy anything from amazon, just my personal decision

------
webboynews
Anybody got a Chinese to English dictionary where more frequent meaning comes
first? Cdict has this problem that lots of times some random obscure meanings
are mentioned before popular meanings.

(For example ，下去- go down is an irrelevant meaning and the first relevant
meaning- continue is 3rd in the list)

~~~
jonatron
Just googling "下去 continue" brought up [https://www.linguee.com/chinese-
english/translation/%E4%B8%8...](https://www.linguee.com/chinese-
english/translation/%E4%B8%8B%E5%8E%BB.html) . Googling "chinese english
dictionary common usage" brought up someone with the same complaint as you:
[http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-
dict...](http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english-
dictionaries.htm)

~~~
webboynews
I appreciate your trying to figure out a solution to my problem. A sincere
thanks.

------
ecesena
A list of (pretty awesome) projects from the same author/team:
[https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-
kosagi](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi)

------
throwaway8282
> I also hesitantly recommend installing Baidu maps. It’s basically malware,
> so uninstall it upon leaving China

Anyone have more info about this? What does/can the app do with the
permissions it has?

~~~
hamhand
It agressively pushes all the other products Baidu has, like every other
Chinese big app, but Baidu's reputation is especially bad, think about it as
Baidu's Wechat super app. You can try Tencent Map.

If you are using Android, then get ready being asked for all kinds of
permissions as it's Chinese apps' tradition, some apps even outright refuse to
run if you decline it.

------
rmbryan
More information from the dedication:

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626)

------
baybal2
Here is a nice video on the city:
[https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0](https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0)

------
jancsika
Will any of the vendors give you source code and specs for the hardware?

------
peter_d_sherman
Excerpt (from page 19):

Internet & Helpful Apps

"As a general rule, the Internet as you know it is blocked in China. There’s
no access to Google services, Facebook, Twitter, Imgur, YouTube, Vimeo,
Dropbox, Telegram, etc. etc. As a consolation, there’s Bing. Roaming data
service will bypass the firewall since roaming phones are assigned an IP
address from the home country of the subscriber’s carrier, but it’s an
expensive option. Prices vary depending upon the carrier, but currently
T-mobile offers one of the lowest cost international roaming data plans. A VPN
is a cheaper way to get around the firewall, but depending upon the political
climate even VPNs can be blocked. China’s firewall routers have the ability to
do deep packet inspection and thus can automatically discover VPN connections
running on unconventional ports or with other small modifications intended to
bypass less sophisticated firewalls."

------
oneoff-acct
I'm deeply unsettled by the economic relationship between China and the rest
of the world, particularly with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and
the UK. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear nations have tried at all costs
to avoid arms races and armed conflict. However, war still happens, but on
more subtle fronts.

China is waging economic warfare in earnest:

\- Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese
investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US
population from homeowners to renters.

\- Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that
Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.

\- Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect
itself from US sanctions and tariffs

\- Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of
outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T)

At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or
abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian
surveillance state.

I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I
suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's
citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering
to what extent one should do business with China.

~~~
yuy910616
It's kinda strange that these accounts are popping up all over the place to
stoke fear on China. What's the agenda here I wonder?

Chinese are known to pay folks to post on foreign forums. I'm not sure who is
behind these...fascinating stuff

~~~
oneoff-acct
I'm a US citizen working at a tech company. I have a normal HN account with
reputation above 2000. These are my own thoughts and opinions. I'm just
honestly afraid of being targeted by Chinese hackers for posting sentiments
like the above.

~~~
account73466
It is like to post something negative about LGBT and claim that you fear being
attacked by their active members. China and Chinese don't give a XYZT about
you. HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the
war with Eastasia is in progress.

~~~
mr_overalls
. . . or as long as Chinese leadership continues to engage in human rights
abuses, or as long as Chinese companies continue with rampant theft of
intellectual property, manufacturing of unsafe/unethical products, etc.

Not all criticism is a sign of national- or racially-targeted abuse. No one is
above criticism.

~~~
account73466
Your previous highly downvoted comment was about another war. It seems that
you are bombed with hateful information, take a break.

