Zach Wortham

I HAVE been living at a rented apartment in the Sunflower hotel in Shixia, Futian District, for more than a year. The 170-square-meter duplex suite is well-furnished and has a quiet, family-friendly environment. I feel my pace of life slow down when I go back to my apartment after work.

A friend of mine introduced the hotel to me a year ago. I thought of giving it a try at the start, but later the refined and welcoming ambience at the hotel made it hard for me to leave the place. My Chinese wife and my two daughters come from Guangzhou to live here once in a while, and they have gradually come to like the suite, which is now regarded as another home of ours.

There is wooden furniture and a comfortable double bed. The living room and the three bedrooms are spacious and luxurious, complete with a balcony where we can dry clothes. The landscaping outside the apartment is marvelous and the in-the-air courtyard as well as the mini golf court are real luxuries in the busy CBD area.

I feel my Sunflower suite is worth more than what I pay. I used to live in similar suites in New York and Hong Kong, where they cost 40,000 yuan (US$6,484) to 60,000 yuan per month. Here at the Sunflower hotel, the suite costs only 30,000 yuan.

At my Sunflower suite, I can cook Chinese meals such as jiaozi, stir-fried rice and sliced steamed chicken for my friends, which is unthinkable in a normal hotel room. I can also invite my friends to come over to play mahjong, which I learned from my wife. Once I asked hotel staff whether they could change the curtains in the suite, and my request was promptly satisfied.

I like the concept of “treat the clients as family members” at the Sunflower hotel. They follow through. For example, they would pick up my clothes on the balcony for me when it rains; hotel employees would also pick up dirty socks on the floor and clean them for me.

The Sunflower suite also serves as my social platform. I sometimes invite some of my major partners over to have kung fu tea or coffee, or drink red wine. Some of our plans to cooperate were reached and some orders were placed while talking and laughing.

I spend most of my time in Futian (Coco Park) and Nanshan (OCT Loft), doing what most people do in Shenzhen: work. But when I do get a chance to venture outside the CBD area, I am always amazed at the diversity of the people who have made Shenzhen their home. Shenzhen is truly a melting pot of people from all over China, which makes it very open to new experiences and ways of doing things. Want some good Cantonese food? No problem. Want some dumplings from Northeast China? We got that. Xinjiang BBQ? Just say how much. Shenzheners are some of the nicest and most generous people in the world and I feel pretty lucky to have been able to see a little of it and be a part of it.

Zach Wortham is an operating director of the China section of Texas-based Skullcandy, a manufacturer of headphones. He has been living and working in South China for eight years. Before he joined Skullcandy, he worked for a Chinese law firm for five years, being responsible for handling issues related to corporate registrations, contract disputes, labor disputes and intellectual property rights.