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[jane1]

Greetings,

I was recently transferred to Dongguan, Guangdong. I was wondering what places I should see as a tourist and a resident. What places should I stay away from? What places should I not miss? Where can I buy good quality electronics like a digital camera, cell phone?

How is it like living in a city of 7 million people?

[Roger]

It's not really a
"city of 7 million inhabitants", rather a conglomerate of different towns under a unified administration; Dongguan city proper is excluding large swathes of territory along the Pearl River.
Shilong, for instance, seems to be outside Dongguan proper but it is pretty close. There isn't much to see there, though.
The city proper is new and has been developing over the last ten years or so. It is not scenic but then again it isn't as ugly as so many other "modern" Chinese towns are. I found shopping to be quite good in Dongcheng; it also has a sizeable expat population and many independent businesspeople from outside of China; Taiwanese seem to be the major investors (and that is why there are quite some crooked deals being done between investors and officials).
But you are pretty safe in Dongguan; one place I have second-hand info RE muggings is Houjie, which is on the highway to the bridge across the Pearl River. The people complaining about this were FTs teaching at a Taiwanese-invested private school (with two branches in town and another or so in Jiangxi).

History buffs owe it to themselves to visit the Museum of War (not the exact name, I know) in HUMEN; this museum is dedicated to the Opium War that raged there (on British maps called "The Bogue"). Pretty well documented show.