Shanghai surprise

It has been ages since I last set foot in Shanghai, well, actually about three years. But three years is like a quarter century in China, due to its break-neck speed of development. If you haven't been to a place in China for a couple of years, you run the risk of not recognizing the surroundings. Old, familiar quarters will have been demolished to make way for new developments: shopping centers, restaurants, hotels, ring roads, subways...

Shanghai was a completely different place when I first visited the city in January 1986. The best hotel in town was the venerable Jinjiang. But you couldn't just book a room. Even if they happened to have an empty room, they were not going to give it to you unless somne friend or acquaintance could put in a word or two at the reception.

On my second visit to Shanghai, I stayed in the room of a Japanese friend of a friend, who happened to be on holiday in Japan. That was the only way to get a hotel room. Dinner was served in – well, you couldn't call it a restaurant, rather a cantine – between 6 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. Arrive at 6.45 p.m. and the cook would have gone home and the kitchen was closed. Outside the Hengshan Hotel, Shanghai was completely dark. Shanghai had already gone to bed.

How times have changed. But nothing, not even Shanghai, can continue to change at the speed of light. Change it will, but at a slower pace. So I will probably not have a “Shanghai surprise” when I touch down at Hongqiao Airport on Wednesday.