I have a friend on Skype who is a grad student in Shenzhen and I talked to her this afternoon, 4 September 2022.  She confirmed that it has been quite hot there and that they are in a restriction on where they can go at this time.  She is allowed to go to the university lab where she is a Master's student in Biological Engineering, but normal activities are quite restricted.  For instance, she and some friends had planned on going to the coast to do surfing, but they cancelled those plans due to the current COVID-19 governmental restrictions on travel and other activities.  We didn't get into all of the current restrictions there, but life has changed.  Normally I would talk to her at her school location, but today she was at home in a dormitory.  One thing that I did learn from her, unrelated to the COVID-19 restrictions and unrelated to the severe drought and heat was that not only most of her fellow students, but most of the population in general in Shenzhen, speaks Mandarin instead of Cantonese.  She explained that the city and her university are mostly populated by people who orignated in other areas of China where Mandarin was the common language.  I had thought that because of the proximity to Hong Kong that Cantonese would be overwhelmingly the predominant dialect spoken in Shenzhen, but she assured me otherwise.  I gave a specific example by asking her what would happen if she ventured off campus to buy a pizza or do anything else, would she need to converse in Cantonese and she told me that the vast majority there speak Mandarin.  She did say that maybe the old people in that area ( those "over 70" as an example) might be more prone to speak in Cantonese, but the young and middle aged in Shenzhen for the most part would converse in Mandarin.  I had to remind her that I am over 70 so that qualifes me as being "old".  The thing speaks for itself.  It is what it is.

Okiedo