Embark on a 6-week trip to the Silicon Valley of China
Immersively Experience China’s Tech and Innovation
Newcomers to China often face a barrage of difficulties when visiting China including China’s internet firewall, language barriers, trouble with navigating the tech ecosystem and more.
Well friend… it’s your lucky day. That’s all about to change!
Introducing Unlock China
Unlock China is a 6-week curated trip for founders, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to discover the world of Chinese tech, learn Mandarin immersively, and navigate the world of Chinese startups in Shenzhen, China.
Instead of facing all the difficulties and boundaries of visiting China, let us handle the logistics and complicated stuff, and you focus on learning and sponging in the language and culture. The goal of this trip is to not just visit China while living in a western bubble, as many tourists do, but instead integrate you into the roots of Chinese society.
To do this, we’ve arranged weekly Mandarin lessons, private accommodation in local Shenzhen apartments, a guide of all the local apps and necessities, tours of local tech companies and meetups with startups in the vibrant Shenzhen tech scene.
Don’t just visit China as a tourist, fully integrate yourself into Chinese tech culture through authentic experiences and day-to-day life.
What’s included?
From the moment your flight lands in Shenzhen, everything is taken care of:
- Your Accommodation (private apartment)
- Membership to one of Shenzhen’s top co-working spaces
- Three 2-hour mandarin lessons per week
- A guide to the Shenzhen startups and tech ecosystem
- Weekly tech tours, meetups and cultural events
- Pre-loaded data SIM card (unlocked phone required)
- Shenzhen metro card
- A detailed list of all the Chinese apps you’ll need for daily life
- A community of forward-thinking entrepreneurs
Discover the Other Side of the Internet
While in North America and Europe have grown accustomed to using apps like Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Netflix, Tinder, WhatsApp and countless others, China is a bit like the Upside Down parallel universe in Stranger Things.
In China, there are a whole different suite of apps that people use everyday, many of which never expand beyond China (because they don’t need to).
Here are some Chinese equivalents of our apps:
- Ride Sharing (Uber) — Didi
- Apartment Rentals (Airbnb) — Xiaozhu
- Search (Google) — Baidu, Baidu Maps
- Web Browser (Google Chrome)— UC Browser
- Communication (WhatsApp) — WeChat
- Payments (Apple Pay, Google Wallet)— WeChat Pay, AliPay
- Online Shopping (Amazon) — TaoBao, JD.com
- Dating (Tinder/Bumble) — TanTan, Momo
- Bike Sharing — Mobike, OFO
- Online Discussion (Reddit/Quora)— Weibo
- Video Streaming (YouTube) — Tentcent Video, YouKu
- Music Streaming (Spotify, Apple Music) — Kugou, NetEase
Why Shenzhen?
Shenzhen is one of China’s four Tier-1 megacities (in the ranks beside Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou), which is widely-regarded as the “Silicon Valley of China”.
A stone’s throw away from Hong Kong, Shenzhen was deemed China’s first special economic zone, allowing citizens to partake in private enterprise despite the country’s communist regime. This was a major catalyst for this tiny 30,000-person fishing village to grow into what is today one of China’s most prosperous megacities, with a population of over 12 million.
Today, Shenzhen is China’s epicentre of technological advancement, infrastructure, startups, hardware, and manufacturing.
Why China?
Only a small percentage of people truly know about the vast leaps China is making in technological advancement, infrastructure, and more. Here are a few reasons why you’re probably more behind on the world of China than you may realize.
- Payments — Cashless Society
In China, Tencent and Alibaba have created payment technologies that account for 92% of all mobile payments. WeChat has over 900 million daily active users, 89% of which use WeChat Pay. Even street vendors and beggars now resort to accepting money via WeChat Pay or Alipay.
And it’s sneaking into the West. Next time you visit a shopping mall, pay close attention. You may not even realize that these payment technologies are even sneaking into our malls under our noses. - Tech Startups and Venture Capital:
Chinese startups have, on average, raised over 3X the amount that U.S. based startups have raised per Series A deal in the last 5 years. *. China is the only country in the world that has had billion-dollar Series-A rounds of investment.
A report by Deloitte and China Venture says that China accounts for 38.9 per cent of the total number of unicorns globally, and the US accounts for 42.1 per cent. - Technological Advancement
Amazon Go created buzz in the US by introducing the world’s first cashierless grocery store piloted in Seattle. And when this happened, Bingo Box launched already their first cashierless convenience stores as far back as 2016, and today has over 200 stores in 29 different Chinese cities. - National Infrastructure
China is building infrastructure faster than any other country in the world. Don’t believe it? Take a look at the country’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to connect 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania by shipping route or railroad. Not enough? Then take a look at how China just unveiled the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge spanning 55km. The country’s raw production power is unparalleled. - Investment in Clean Tech
The Clean200 list, launched by As You Sow and Corporate Knights, revealed that 68 of the world’s largest 200 publicly-listed clean tech firms are China-based. Twice the number of the 35 from the US, despite the US stock market being more than twice the size of Greater China’s.
The Accommodations
All participants of the trip will have access to a private, modern, one-bedroom apartment with private bathroom, kitchen/kitchenette, within a 15–20 minute walk from our co-working space.
The Co-working Space
In the centre of Shenzhen’s Central Business District, is Bee+, one of the Shenzhen (and China’s) finest co-working spaces.
Complete with nap rooms, shower rooms, meeting rooms, private phone booths, and a kitchen with over 200 different types of drinks, not to mention all their and rich weekly networking events, Bee+ goes the whole nine yards.
As a part of the trip, each participant will have hot desk space within this vibrant community of founders, and makers, just minutes away from your accommodation.
How do I apply and how much does it cost?
To learn more, visit our website at unlockchina.io.
Interested in joining us? Please submit your application here! It only takes a few minutes, we’ll schedule a call to get to know one another, and it doesn’t cost anything to apply! There are limited spots available on this trip. For this reason, not everyone who applies will be admitted to the program.
The cost is $5,500 USD per person. This includes:
- Private accommodation
- Co-working space membership
- Three 2-hour Mandarin lessons per week
- Pre-loaded data SIM card (unlocked phone required)
- Shenzhen metro card
- Weekly organized trips to Chinese tech companies, startup accelerators, events, manufacturing plants and more
About the founder:
Iskender (Izzy) Piyale-Sheard spent more than a year as the trip facilitator for the world’s first co-working retreat for software developers, Hacker Paradise. Since then, he’s been the Community Manager for one of Canada’s top coding bootcamps, Lighthouse Labs.
Izzy has built and integrated with tech and startup communities in countries all over the world, is known around the world for being one of the best connectors.
