About
Built in Shenzhen for your first 24 hours, not the travel fantasy.
Shenzhen Decoded gets foreign visitors through the things that actually wreck a first day: payment, which border crossing to use, whether you need a visa, apps, and the small practical details most travel content skips. Stometa writes and maintains it — six years in Shenzhen, after living in the US — with Yiko on design and Kelly editing. Every guide is checked against official sources monthly or quarterly before its freshness date moves.
What the site is for
- Give a confused newcomer one obvious first step.
- Keep live border calls separate from guides that don't change week to week.
- Put freshness and proof where you can see them, not tucked away in the footer.
- Send you somewhere useful next, so no guide is a dead end.
Not a luxury city magazine. Not a catch-all China expat wiki. Not a listicle machine. The job is to stop your first day from going wrong when you cross into Shenzhen.
Who writes it
- Stometa Six years in Shenzhen and still here. Before that, the US.
- Yiko Designer. Picks the type, the photos, and how every page looks.
- Kelly Editor. Night owl. Happier outdoors than at a desk.
Shenzhen Decoded is made by the three of us. Stometa started it and still checks every guide on the ground; Yiko designs it; Kelly edits. Got a question, a correction, or a tip we missed? Write to hello@shenzhendecoded.com.
How it stays up to date
Every guide is checked against official sources monthly or quarterly before its freshness date moves.
- Official feeds first, community reports second. Border data comes from Hong Kong Immigration. Policy wording is checked against National Immigration Administration pages before the freshness date on the page moves.
- Built around what blocks you, not content categories. The homepage, checklist, live border page and visa checker are there to speed up a first-timer's next decision, not to drag you down an article rabbit hole.
- Freshness, screenshots and next steps stay on the page. You should be able to see the trust signals without scrolling to the footer or wondering whether the page was last touched years ago.
