Lianhua Shan Park Shenzhen

It's an easy half-hour amble up to the top of this tropical hill in the heart of Futian District for Shenzhen's best skyline photographs. Appropriately, you'll be sharing the mind-blowing vistas with Deng Xiaoping (in statue form), whose economic reforms in the 1980s made this whole crazy mess of prosperity possible. Anecdotally, the man who cast the statue of Deng was the father of Teng Fei, proprietor of Old Heaven Books and B10 Live House, and curator of the OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival. Lianhua Shan Park is also a popular kite-flying spot.