In the dragon's head: Life in Shanghai

Shanghai is a crazy and incredible city. It's also hyperbolically overwhelming: It has a population roughly two-thirds the size of Canada and is responsible for more than five per cent of China's gross domestic product.


First off, two things you should know:


1) Shanghai is not beautiful, at least not in the conventional sense. It's enormous and sprawling and crowded and frenetic and pedestrian-unfriendly, filled with traffic and often-less-than-pleasant smells. It can also be scary. Don't let this turn you off: It's a fascinating place.


2) Shanghai is in no way representative of the rest of China. Most of China is rural, and resembles a Pearl S. Buck novel. Shanghai is hyper-urban and vascillates drunkenly between the hyper-modern and hyper-slumlike. It's fascinating in part because of its wholly anachronistic presence in a huge country that, in many ways, is itself an anachronism. So yeah.


Another thing easily overlooked as you stroll, disoriented, from Nanjing Dong Lu through "old Shanghai" to Xintiandi and the French Concession, or as you wander Lujiazui trying not to get run over: Shanghai was never historically important. Far from it. This place was a small, indistinct fishing villate until well into the Qing dynasty. It was dwarfed by Suzhou, several times over.


About 20 years ago the Chinese central government decided to make Shanghai an exception in China--a crazy-big, crazy-powerful economic powerhorse for the rest of the country to follow. Much of the city's most iconic skyscraper neighbourhoods have been set there in the past decade expressly for the purpose of pushing Shanghai forward as a "world-class" city. In many ways, the government has succeeded. The effect(s) this has had on Shanghai's population is something worth exploring when you're there.


One interesting thing about Shanghai as the "dragon's head" of Chinese development is the presence of migrant workers. Like other big cities (Beijing, Shenzhen, etc), Shanghai has become a magnet for people from all over China who come in search of work. There's without doubt a demand for them (or at least there was before the jinrong weiji 金融 危机--the economic crisis), but thanks to a rigid household registration (hukou 户口）system and entrenched xenophobia, they're made to feel distinctly unwelcome by both locals and officials alike. You'll get to watch this bizarre situation play out firsthand, as Beijing and Shanghai's governments are still trying to figure out how to deal with the city's "floating population."

You'll also find, like big cities in many countries, very divergent opinions on Shanghai. Shanghairen, of course, think their city is the greatest of all time and openly look down on people from anywhere else in China as uncultured boors (except Beijingren, whom they regard as political eggheads). The millions of people who move to Shanghai from elsewhere in China, for their part, think Shanghairen are standoffish snobs who only care about money. Have fun negotiating that.