“Not Shanghai. I don’t want to stay in Shanghai.”
“But we…”
“I don’t get Shanghai. And I’m never lucky in Shanghai.”
In 2000, I promptly left the city a mere few hours after the plane touched down at the newly opened Pudong International Airport. Officially, it was because the hostel I had bookmarked—yes, literally bookmarked, in a printed Lonely Planet guidebook—was full. But really, I had a bad feeling about it. It didn’t feel cozy or friendly—Nanjing next door was, and I adopted it for a month.
I did go to Shanghai, but only on day trips—hey, I wanted to see the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Bund, still under construction as the city was building the skyline that would later become famous. But I stayed in Nanjing.
I gave it another shot in 2014. That year, I was actually desperate to go to Shanghai—I had just spent a few weeks with Feng, toddler Mark being fed and criticized nonstop by my entire father-in-law’s family in Wuhan, so let’s just say that the prospect of ditching the many Chinese people I was now loosely related to was very enticing.
We had to ask for my father-in-law’s permission to go. Apparently, it was bad form to say “xièxie, bú yòng” (谢谢，不用) to Chinese hosts and just go travelling.
Unfortunately, I arrived in Shanghai sick after catching a bug in Changsha, ahem, close to Wuhan. No kidding. It was 2014, so the world didn’t go into lockdown but I was coughing nonstop. Please don’t report me to the WHO as patient zero.
In fact, this is my only memory of Shanghai that year—wandering around the streets of the city just waking up at 5 a.m. because I was coughing so much I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to wake up toddler Mark.
I’m telling you, I’m not lucky in Shanghai.
There are a few famous cities in the world that I can only take in bite-sized pieces. It must be me because they are amazing according to everybody else. Take Paris, for instance. I’ll happily spend a few days there, especially if I can crash at someone’s place, but I never entertained the thought of living in Paris. Everything is too expensive, too codified, too… Parisian.
I feel the same about Rio de Janeiro. Carnival? Hell, yeah. An extended stay for no reason whatsoever? Thanks but no thanks. There are cheaper, friendlier cities where locals aren’t convinced they are semi-deities because they live in the “right” place.
Add Melbourne, New York, Toronto and Singapore to the list. Been there, done that, happily left.
“We can take a day trip to Shanghai from Nanjing,” Feng suggested.
“Absolutely.”
As long as we don’t stay there for days.
By Saturday, I was actually happy to go check out Shanghai again. I love Nanjing but I love travelling even more, so taking the train and going somewhere kind of new again sounded like a fun idea.
An hour and a half later, we stopped at one of Shanghai’s many train stations—I can’t remember which one, but it was far enough from Nanjing Lu that my first taste of Shanghai was the packed subway.
The sun wasn’t shining and it looked like it could rain any moment. It didn’t make Nanjing Lu less crowded.
I ordered a coffee at Luckin and realized there was a 35-minute wait when I looked at my number.
I cancelled my order.
We didn’t even step into the White Rabbit flagship store because it looked like there was no room for three more people.
We didn’t eat Shanghai’s famous snacks because they looked suspiciously like Beijing’s famous snacks or even Nanjing’s, just a bit more expensive.
Mark bought a tánghúlu, though.
We walked to the Bund, attempted to take pictures of the skyline without other people in them, gave up and embraced both random strangers in our pictures and the futuristic skyline with a few towers that were just blueprints in someone’s office in 2014.
I followed Feng, who wanted to take the new Bund sightseeing tunnel.
“We just walk to the other side?”
“I guess.”
We had guessed wrong.
It’s not just a random, well-engineered tunnel taking pedestrians from the Bund to Pudong on the other side of the river. It’s a five-minute psychedelic experience aboard a cart going way too slow for a thrilling ride but way too fast to understand what the hell is going on and why there’s “sightseeing” in the name.
Phew.
Pudong was mostly empty except for tourists hoping to go up one of the famous towers. We didn’t even try. If I can’t get a cup of coffee on Nanjing Lu, chances are we can’t get three tickets to the top of whatever before nighttime.
Still caffeine-free, I sighed.
I feel out of my league in Shanghai. It’s too busy, too crowded, too rushed, too sophisticated, too expensive.
We took the subway to another district, Pǔtuó—Feng had heard it was the latest “artsy” up-and-coming neighbourhood.
We stepped into a different world. The first buildings around the subway stations looked like they were falling apart. No air con, people playing mahjong, laundry drying outside, bicycles instead of fancy cars.
“Ah, this is the other Shanghai, I guess!”
The M50 Creative Park was nowhere near as raw—more Montmartre than a favela, with galleries, artists showcasing their work and cute graffiti.
“It smells like my grandmother’s place!” Feng smiled. “Tea and cigarettes.”
“Ah, it smells like my entire childhood! Oil paint, gouache and turpentine!”
And for the first time, I kind of felt at home in Shanghai.
We wandered around the narrow streets, stepping into galleries and watching the sun go down. The Bund looks amazing at night, but here we were, in the only place without neon signs, yet the only place that didn’t feel too Disneyland-ish.
We changed our train tickets—not to stay in Shanghai, but to stay a few more hours in Shanghai.
But I happily travelled back to Nanjing.
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