本文是一位美国朋友发表在自己博客上的文章，他的博客名为“bunnie：studios”。原文见后面。

十年之前，如果想要寻找最新的电子元件和数码产品，日本的秋叶原电子卖场会是人们的首选，不过我确信它的地位已经被位于中国深圳的赛格电子市场所取代。（不过公平点讲，我听说在韩国也有一个很不错的电子市场，甚至日本人在把自己制造的产品拿到秋叶原销售之前，会先在那里进行试销。）

　当我一踏入这座赛格大厦，就被不计其数的电子器件所包围。成堆的电阻器、电容器、各种IC电路、电感器、继电器、双头测试探针、伏特计、存储芯片等等，全部都挤在一个个面积只有6×3英尺的柜台里，售货员则在柜台后面拨弄着笔记本电脑，有时在玩游戏，有时在计算电子器件的数量。而且市场里有很多名副其实的夫妻店，他们的孩子在过道里玩耍，妈妈则在柜台旁小心地看护着。

另一些柜台就非常职业化，店员们穿着整齐的制服站在后面，柜台前还摆放着吧凳，所以这些柜台看起来更像是出售电子器件的酒吧。

　这里不像秋叶原，在那里你只能买到十几个LED灯管或者两三个继电器。赛格完全不是那样，这里的柜台非常专业，如果你看到什么喜欢的东西，你可以买好几卷，甚至好几箱——然后你明天就可以使用这些材料去工厂制造产品了。在那边，一个妇女在整理一堆1GB的mini-SD卡，就像在玩扑克牌；而这边，一个男人把1GB的金士顿记忆棒放入零售展台；紧挨着他，一个女孩则在计算电阻器的数量。

一堆堆的电源模块、电阻器、电池，还有可编程ROM都让我目不暇接。Atmel、Intel、Broadcom、Samsung、Yamaha、Sony、AMD、Fujitsu，在这里你能找到每个品牌的芯片。有些芯片很明显是二手的，背后的刻字都已经经过打磨；而那些全新的芯片则有着激光蚀刻的OEM包装。

这里拥有我在美国想都不敢想的芯片，成包的陶瓷电阻器就摆在我面前，以前我只能在梦里见到它们。看到这些，我的意识麻木了，大脑也晕眩了。当我走到下一个角落的时候，又情不自禁地激动起来，因为我看到，从地板一直到天花板，这里的商店被大概有上百万电阻器和电容器所堆满。

　哦，天呐！索尼的CCD和CMOS照相机元件，在美国，面对那些站在柜台后面、并且有时手拿数据表的销售代表时，除非我威胁把他们的牙拔下来，才能得到这些。在这里，我甚至能看到等待出售的一大包Micrel稳压芯片和一个Blackfin DSP芯片。这里嘈杂，这里喧闹，这里是独一无二的电子元件跳蚤市场。那边，一位女士在数一堆每包108支的256Mbit DRAM芯片，这堆大概有20列、10行——坐在在我面前的这位女士拥有的DRAM芯片数量竟然相当于Digikey（北美的主要电子元件经销商）的全部存量。

走过这位女士，前面还有半打的小店铺像她一样拥有各种芯片。一个男人就站在一堆4Gbit的NAND FLASH面前。这里是电子爱好者的天堂，讨价还价之后，只需要很少的现金和一句简单的再见，你就能够得到所有自己想要的东西。如果让Digikey看到这些，他会发疯的。这就像是让猴子们偷偷溜进位于明尼苏达州Thief River Falls的Digikey总部，然后把他们的存货弄到了中国的跳蚤市场。

然而，我所介绍的只是赛格的一楼和二楼而已，上面还有整整六层，在出售电脑配件、数码相机、各种系统、笔记本电脑、主板、数码摄像头、安全摄像头、优盘、鼠标、摄像机、高端显卡、平板显示器、碎纸机、照明灯、投影仪等等所有你能叫出名字的电子产品。在周末，促销人员会穿上难看的宏基（Acer）牌的闪光的套服，四处走动，想要把你拉去购买她们的产品。除了不会展示最新的技术，这里的火热程度就像一年一度的CES展会和Computex展会一样，人们总想要把你拉进这些柜台购买点什么。CES那些交易展总让人觉得有点不舒服，人们必须隔着玻璃罩子观看那些参展品，而里面那些东西似乎也难以得到。但在赛格则完全不同，这里是购买电子器件的个人顾客和企业买主狂欢的地方，只要你的钱夹够鼓，那么你可以把手伸向每一件商品。

走出赛格大厦，向下走过三个街区就到了深圳书店。首先见到而且最显眼的书架就是外语区，上面摆满了像《Thomas Lee’s RF design book》和《Razavi》这些经典书籍，我买下了前者，竟然只花了8.5美元，噢！还买了一本Jin Au Kong的《Maxwell’s Equation》，5美元。我有点狂热了，一共把了六、七本书装到我的口袋里，在美国，这些书的总价可能要达到700美元，但当我在款台结账的时候，把每本书附带的CD都算上，也只花了不到35美元。这只想当于一张飞到香港的经济舱机票！

　　这里的知识不贵，电子元件也便宜，不过这些书里所蕴含的知识却货真价实，根据这些知识所建造的工厂就坐落在街道的尽头。开车一路向北行驶，不到一小时的车程就能见到大约200家制造工厂，他们能够理解任何电子学的想法，然后从字面上提取出这些知识……而且，这些工厂一直在不断前进。我亲眼看到那里正在铺设和测试一条高质量的1550海哩的单模长途光纤线。深圳是一片肥沃的土壤，你必须过来自己亲眼看到这一切才能理解。作为一名来自美国的技术专家，我深感恐慌，既担忧又激动——在全球化的经济中，这一切都与我息息相关！这个地方所孕育的感觉就像swapfests在80年代的硅谷一样，那时所有的大公司都刚刚成立而且开始成长……当然，与当时的硅谷不同的是，深圳自然具备了在摩尔定律下高速发展了25年的技术基础，而且它还具备通过互联网传输的信息流所带来的发展速度。在这座城市居住的1200万人，大多数都从事高科技或者制造业，他们受到大量来自海外的影响，它们很多人会英语，而且所有的人都愿意努力工作，在这个地方的某个宁静的建筑物里，未来一定会诞生下一代的Jobs和Wozniak（乔布斯和沃兹尼克，苹果公司共同创始人）。

　　OK，我在上一段所讲的内容可能没有说明什么说服力。因为我把相机丢在了去深圳的飞机上，所以现在某个人会拾到一台照相机，里面满是圣诞节、工厂、单身派对的照片和特殊电器元件的特写。他一定会觉得我是一个古怪的人（我看自己无法解释这个问题！）。不过我会很快再弄一台相机，然后好好拍些图片——给我几天时间！

Akihabara, Eat Your Heart Out
January 31st, 2007

Ten years ago, Akihabara was the place to be for the latest electronics and knick knacks and components. I’m convinced the new place to be is the SEG Electronics Market in Shenzhen (although to be fair I heard there is a competing market in Korea that’s supposedly even better–the Japanese test-market their stuff there even before they try it in Akihabara!).

As I first step foot into the building, I am assaulted by a whirlwind of electronic components. Tapes and reels of resistors and capacitors, ICs of every type, inductors, relays, pogo pin test points, voltmeters, trays of memories, all crammed into tiny six-by-three foot booths with a storekeeper poking away at a laptop, sometimes playing Go, sometimes counting parts. Some booths are true mom-and-pop shops, with mothers tending to babies and kids playing in the aisles.

Other booths are professional setups with uniformed staff and work like a bar for electronic components, complete with bar stools.

And it’s not like, oh, you can get ten of these LEDs or a couple of these relays like you do in Akihabara. No, no. These booths specialize and if you see something you like, you can usually buy several tubes, trays or reels of it–you can go into production the next day. Over there, a woman sorting stacks of 1GB mini-SD cards like poker chips; here, a man putting sticks of 1 GB Kingston memory into retail packages, next to him, a girl counting resistors.

Stacks of power supplies, varistors, batteries; ROM programmers. Atmel, Intel, Broadcom, Samsung, Yamaha, Sony, AMD, Fujitsu, every variety of chip. Some of them clearly ripped out of used equipment and remarked, some of them in brand new laser-marked OEM packaging.

Chips that I couldn’t dream of buying in the US, reels of rare ceramic capacitors that I only dream about at night. My senses tingle, my head spins. I can’t supress a smirk of anticipation as I walk around the next corner, to see shops stacked floor to ceiling with probably a hundred million resistors and capacitors.

Oh my god! Sony CCD and CMOS camera elements, I couldn’t buy those in the US if I pulled teeth out of the sales reps–and behind the counter, the guy sometimes has a datasheet–ask for it. A stack of Micrel regulator chips–over there, a Blackfin DSP chip for sale. The smell, the bustle, the hustle. It’s the ultimate electronic component flea market. Over here, a lady counting 256 Mbit DRAM chips…trays of 108 components, stacked twenty high, a row of perhaps 10 of them–she has the equivalent of Digikey’s entire stock of DRAM chips sitting right in front of me.

And across from her is a half dozen more little shops packed with chips just like hers. A man standing proudly over a tray of 4 Gbit NAND FLASH. All of this available for a little haggling, a bit of cash, and a hasty goodbye. This is Digikey gone mad. It’s as if they let the monkeys into the warehouse at Thief River Falls, Minnesota and spilled it into a flea market in China, and then some.

And that’s just the first two floors. Six more floors of computer components, systems, laptops, motherboards, digital cameras, security cameras, thumb drives, mice, video cameras, high end graphics cards, flat panel displays, shredders, lamps, projectors, you name it. On weekends, “booth babes” dressed in outrageous Acer-branded glittery body suits are loitering around trying to pull you in to buy their wares. It’s got all the energy of a year-round CES meets Computex, except the point here is not to show off the latest technology–it’s to get you in to these booths to buy it. Trade shows always feel like a bit of a strip tease, with your breath making ghostly rings on the glass as you hover close over the unobtainable wares underneath. This is no strip tease. This is the orgy of consumer and industrial electronic purchasing, you can get your grubby paws on every piece of equipment for enough quai out of your wallet.

A brisk walk down the street 3 blocks lies the Shenzhen bookstore. The first and most visible rack of books is a foreign book section, packed with classic books like Thomas Lee’s RF design book and several Razavi titles. I pick up Lee’s book…68 quai, or $8.50. Holy cow! Jin Au Kong’s book on Maxwell’s Equations…$5. Jin Au Kong taught me Maxwell’s Equations at MIT. I go on a spree…I pack my bag with six or seven titles, probably around $700 worth of books, and I go to the checkout counter and buy them for less than $35–complete with the supplemental CDs.That’s like an economy class ticket to Hong Kong right there!

Knowledge is cheap. Components are cheap. The knowledege in those books are the Real Deal, and the parts down the street are all there. And within an hours drive north is probably 200 factories that can take any electronics idea and pump them out by the literal boatload…and these are no backward factories. I saw with my own eyes name-brand 1550nm single-mode long-haul fiberoptic transcievers being built and tested out there. Shenzhen is fertile ground. You need to come here to see it to understand it. As a technologist from the US, I tremble in my boots, with terror and excitement–I get to be a part of this! This place has the pregnant feel of the swapfests in Silicon Valley back in the 80’s, when all the big companies were just being founded and starting up…except magnified by 25 years of progress in Moore’s Law and the speed of information flow via the Internet. In this city of 12 million people, most involved in tech or manufacturing, plenty of foreign influence, many learning English, all of them willing to work hard, there has to be a Jobs and Wozniak somewhere, quietly building the next revolution.

Okay, so this wasn’t a name that ware…it’s lame, but my dog ate my homework. I lost my digital camera on the way to Shenzhen in the plane somewhere, so now someone has a camera full of pictures from Christmas, factories, bachelor parties, and idiosyncratic amounts of close-up shots of electronics. The guy who found it has to think I’m a weirdo (I guess I can’t deny that!). I’ll find another ware and put it up soon–give me a couple of days!

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