Finding Shanghai within me

Invariably, I find it hard to write about Shanghai. Most know my fervent, undying love for this city. Actually very few expats in Asia understand it or share the view of Shanghai. In the past, I have discredited such critics simply as having missed out on authentic Shanghai experiences, but since I have chosen the life of an expat, it has dawned on me that very few will share my feelings of Shanghai because Shanghai to me is the connection of who I am, where I came from and where it all seems to be heading.

After nine hours of connections and delays on Tuesday, X and I finally landed in Shanghai. It immediately is a far cry from the previous two weeks of small cities and smaller villages. X's expectations rose upon seeing toilets in the bathrooms. My ever enthusiastic itinerary drags us to the best viewing point of Shanghai before the evening lights are shut on the Bund, the sight of Shanghai that never cease to amaze me. The bund is a collection of buildings, architecture gemstones built by primarily British banks and trading firms back around the turn of 1900s. Luckily they have survived world wars, civil wars and the culture revolution. Today they glitz at night much the same way, in my imagination, as they did in the 1920s.

I have sometimes said that I like buildings more than I like people. Love for Architecture (and the slew of other interests) was born in me because of Shanghai. Although these days they are primarily commercialized institutes, the British Bund, the Villas in the French Concession, the Japanese Mansion that I tore through every weekend - my grandfather's residence, and the old stone arch alleyways, I love these buildings because if they could tell stories, it would be some of the most fascinating tales I would ever hear. There was one peak to the Shanghai's story but now the second peak is just beginning. Sitting on the rooftop bar, champagne in hand, we watched an ex opera singer, the first Shanghainese to study at London's Royal Academy of Music, getting thrown head first into the Jacuzzi. This is only a Tuesday night.

Of all the wisdoms I remember and followed from my mom, "play with older kids...because they know more" and "one can always scrape by in all aspects of life but never mistreat your stomach" probably tie me closest to Shanghai. Stories and histories, collectively of a culture and singularly of a person, make me absorbent. Standing in this city, I can see a civilization's decline and turmoil and the process, slow culturally yet at lightening speed economically, to rebuild. The scale is an entrepreneur's dream; the details are a project manager's absolute nightmare.

As for my never ending culinary pursuits (from farming vs organic to restaurant service), the constant chatter in this city defines how an entire generation of people disseminates food. Long before eating local and green was popular, I remember why my grandmother had to pick the right old hens from a specific village to make chicken soup. Having never set a foot in the first KFC in Shanghai despite it being across the street from the Japanese mansion made me always pursue higher quality, real cuisine. And of course watching our celebration meals turn from my grandmothers handmade 饺子 to ten course private dining at the newest restaurant in the city prepared me for the obsessive, blog-following, restaurant-jaunting trips in Manhattan nearly a decade later.

For this trip, X and I see a bit of old and a bit of new. 100th floor of Shanghai's current tallest building was built by Mori group of Japan, famous for the Roppongi hills development. That stands over 城隍庙 where we devour trays of the original soup dumplings in preserved Chinese Ming dynasty buildings. Soup dumplings was preceded by a fabulous dinner at Table 1, the new Jason Atherton (of London's Maze fame) restaurant at the new boutique hotel Waterhouse at South Bund run by a Singaporean hotelier. The Waterhouse is close to the private dining club in a stone alleyway owned by the afore mentioned wet opera singer. Old overlaps the new and I learn more from the stories and appreciate even better food because of Shanghai