ARRIVAL

In 1995 when I first arrived in Shanghai, it looked like a city frozen in time - that time being 1937, the year the Japanese came in full force. As a British visitor once remarked, Shanghai resembled a cross between old Warsaw and Calcutta. In the area stretching from the world-famous Bund (waterfront) westward into the former French and international settlements, you had a city of primarily western architecture with a Chinese population crammed into it. The city planners in the 1930s envisaged a city of perhaps four million people - now there are over twelve.

The large amount of Western architecture in Shanghai is even more remarkable when you consider that, at no time during its history, did Westerners account for more than 3% of its vast population. But they were the Westerners who, through the Municipal Council, controlled the power, and they built primarily to their own taste - if not for quick profit - in high-density dwellings for the Chinese population. The basis of many of the fortunes amassed by the Westerners was real estate speculation. All the major hongs (companies) had their offices on or near the Bund and each tried to outdo the other in erecting an imposing edifice, one resembling the architecture of the country from which they came - and to which they would ultimately return.

My recollections of that first six months in China's largest city was somewhat goofy, obscured by time and the dreary summer heat that hung stubbornly over Shanghai's low, interminable skyline. Slate-like thick fumes of dust and pollution swirled round the Huangpu River. The streets were no longer thronged with rickshaws instead it was overcrowded with busy cars leaning on their horns, overcrowded buses clunked along, and the ringing of bicycles bells in the frantic traffic.