Tiny Towns, Canto Pop & Shenyang Bananas

Shenyang is a town in north-eastern China, nestled near the borders of Mongolia and North Korea. I t gets very cold, the people are unusually tall and the food is out of this world. By Chinese standards it’s considered a small town – by mine it was massive. The “tiny town” of Shenyang consisted of around 8 million people, a plethora of Italian designer stores, underground shopping malls and incredible food everywhere.

It wasn’t just very cold in Shenyang when I went – it was completely freezing! Minus 3 during the daytime, without windchill, to be exact. Being that cold meant that having a wander was a very hard thing to do. When I did stroll around it was fairly bleak, until I was ushered through what looked like a subway entrance. Bam! There it was – the high street. It was underground, so you could walk around without freezing to death. This was no ordinary high street, though. The shops selling the big brands were at street level, but this was London’s Camden Market of high streets – neon lit, pulsating to the sound of canto pop and Chinese techno, and filled with uber-cool kids decked out in Hello Kitty and glasses without any lenses.