NEW SHANGHAI

Out on the town Passion nightclub is a popular all-night haunt for young Shanghainese, including students and professionals. Outside the entrance around 1.30am. The girl on her mobile phone, pager clipped to her belt and cigarette between her fingers, could well be a hostess from a city Karaoke bar who has finished her shift and is meeting friends for her own night out. But it is difficult to typecast a young Chinese woman from her outfit. Platform shoes are all the rage at the moment in Shanghai, while micro-skirts and skintight shorts have been turning heads for the past four years. It all represents sartorial liberation for a generation born after Mao suits were consigned to the dustbin.

High life in central Shanghai, urban planners are trying to stay one step ahead of the tyranny of the motor vehicle by building an interlocking series of fly-overs designed to keep the traffic moving. It is not an attractive sight, but Shanghai was determined to avoid the sort of jams which these days paralyze Peking. Anyone unfortunate enough to have lived in the path of the new roads was summarily shunted off to the suburbs before the bulldozers moved in. But will this be enough, given that so many upwardly mobile Shanghainese are starting to buy private cars? Shanghai is home to a new General Motors factory whose US$40,000 Buick saloon has become the car of choice for rich locals.

The air vent of the Oriental Shopping Paradise department store provides a welcome breeze in the muggy rainy season. These three boys may just have arrived from the countryside. After the rice harvest, many peasants roll into the city for the first time and do not know how to go about finding work.

Informal networks exist, but with the current over-capacity in the property market, and the lingering impact of the Asian financial crisis, the number of construction jobs is on the decline. The migrants may turn to petty crime, and are vulnerable to police harassment.