Shenzhen is too big to do justice to in a day. So we didn’t try. Instead, here is a 24-hour itinerary built around the corners of the city that surprised us most – the cafés, viewpoints, hotpot tables, and sky bars worth seeking out.

For a city only built up in the last forty years – a former fishing town turned special economic zone – Shenzhen has earned a surprising amount of cultural credibility. UNESCO named it a City of Design back in December 2008, the first such designation in mainland China and only the sixth in the world. The city has spent the years since filling the title in: museums, design biennales, concept stores, and an architectural skyline that reads like a who’s who of international firms. 

Many visitors arrive from Hong Kong by high-speed rail, which covers the 14-minute hop from West Kowloon to Futian station. From Macao, the easiest crossings run via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, either into Zhuhai, where rail or road continues to Shenzhen, or into Hong Kong, where the high-speed rail picks up at West Kowloon.

Brunch and a coffee crawl

Start in Qianhai, the western waterfront zone that has, in the last decade, sprouted skyscrapers and promenades from what was reclaimed land. Wonderfour sits inside Qianhai Kerry Centre, a KPF-designed mixed-use development, and styles itself as part farmer’s market, part brunch spot. Smoothie bowls, fresh pastries, and a generous flat white earn it a loyal weekend crowd.

The city’s speciality coffee scene rewards a detour. Annnd Coffee Shop in Futian draws a design-minded clientele to its Xinzhou branch; the Japanese-leaning Happiness Cafe in Bao’an specialises in pastel-hued desserts; and Floatie at Shenzhen Bay in Nanshan turns sunset coffee into the kind of waterfront ritual you build an afternoon around.

Architecture, art, and a Ferris wheel

The afternoon belongs to Shekou, the popular expat neighbourhood at the southern tip of Nanshan that has recently become the city’s cultural anchor. The Sea World Culture and Arts Center opened here in December 2017, designed by Pritzker laureate Fumihiko Maki – his first project in China – and now houses Design Society, whose programming includes the V&A Gallery, the first partnership of its kind between an international museum and a Chinese institution. The building itself rewards the visit: three cantilevered volumes rising from a granite-clad podium, with the roof doubling as a 24-hour public park overlooking the bay.

For browsing, OCT Park in Nanshan is one of the city’s most photogenic concentrations of waterfront promenades, dining, and indie boutiques, a useful entry point into Shenzhen’s broader concept-store scene, with names like Angle and Not Just a Shop setting the tone for design-led retail across the city.

End the daylight hours at the Bay Glory Ferris Wheel, which rises 128 metres over Shenzhen Bay at OCT Happy Harbour in Bao’an. It is the tallest in the city, and the views over Shenzhen Bay at sunset are the reason to time the visit late in the afternoon. Tickets are 150 yuan on weekdays and weekends, and Linhai station on Metro Line 5 lets out at the entrance.

Dinner, then drinks 48 floors up

Coconut chicken hotpot is one of southern China’s most distinctive takes on the hotpot format, leaning more on the broth than on the dipping sauces. Runyuan Four Seasons Coconut Chicken Hotpot at Sea World makes the strongest local case for the genre – free-range chicken simmering in fresh coconut water, the soup clean and faintly sweet long before anything else hits the table.

Few cities reward a rooftop quite like Shenzhen. The Attic sits on Level 48 of the Park Hyatt Shenzhen, a tower in Futian designed by KPF with interiors by Yabu Pushelberg. Cocktails are handcrafted, the gin list is long, and the floor-to-ceiling windows turn the central business district into a glittering wraparound show.

Where to stay, and getting there

Stay where the bar is. The Park Hyatt occupies the upper reaches of a 48-storey KPF-designed tower in the heart of Futian. The 195 rooms and 24 suites on floors 36 to 44 are the work of design studio Yabu Pushelberg, who built the property around the idea of a botanical oasis in the sky. 

Public spaces are threaded with lantern-style lighting inspired by the woven fishing baskets once used along this stretch of coast, a small nod to the city’s pre-skyscraper history. Even the smallest rooms run to 48 square metres, dressed in soothing greys and ochres with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out across the central business district.

Beyond the Attic, the hotel runs seven restaurants and bars, from Cantonese fine dining at Garden Pavilion (Level 33) to a French-inspired steakhouse on Level 47 with 270-degree city views. There is also a 25-metre indoor lap pool, a spa, and direct underground access to Futian station.