Shanghai surprise

From Philip Moore in China

You think Dubai is moving fast? Hop on a plane and take a squiz at Shanghai.

My two top global chic cities are Tokyo and Paris, with New York third, but Shanghai is challenging their benchmarks at a fast-forward rate.

As recently as the early 1990s, Shanghai’s pretensions to grandeur rested with a few old blokes who remembered the pre-revolutionary bright lights or the wide-eyed, pioneering expatriates who hung out in the French Concession. Business would be massive, they felt, in a land of a billion customers.

“Shanghai has always been a law unto itself, in commerce, the arts,” a businessman told me at a lavish cocktail party. “But while that leads to prosperity and a lot of interesting thought, in the old, old days Shanghai got a hard time for that very reason.”

Under Deng Xiaoping, it all began to change. The late ‘paramount leader’ used Shanghai as the platform for a campaign designed to restore the city to its colonial-era status as the ‘Paris of the East’. Deng announced to his countrymen in 1992 that the city would be the ‘dragonhead’ in China’s resurgence on the world stage. Man oh man, it’s that.
Today the dragonhead is breathing fire. While Beijing has the Olympics, Shanghai has jagged the World Expo.

I’ve been in China’s second-largest city as guest of General Motors, the auto giant, which is market leader in the country in a joint-venture. We’re testing the Caddy SLS - made in China and a winner there to be exported to the Middle East. Why am I hitting you with a Middle East Car magazine-type spiel? Well, the SLS has chauffer-driven written all over it, so if it’s already highly successful in China, particularly Shanghai, you get a bit of an idea how things have changed since Mao’s Long March.

I’m looking out over this amazing city from my room in the world’s tallest hotel, the Grand Hyatt Shanghai.
Everyone seems to be called to China nowadays. I wonder what the late Dick Hughes would make of it all. He was the greatest of all China-watching journalists and found his way into books by John Le Carre (The Honourable Schoolboy) and even a James Bond tome by Ian Fleming (You Only Live Twice).

“Welcome to the real Shanghai,” a Chinese event manager, Bruce Wang, said to me as some stunning local models entered the hotel to shoot a commercial. Big Bruce has an accent as broad as the Australian outback but looks like a movie villain except he has a smile as bright as day. He spent five years in Australia after winning – wait or it – a cricket scholarship.

“It was an honour to meet the likes of Alan Border,” he tells me.

“I know it is, but …er”. Ah, forget it. This is the new China and nothing should surprise.

People from every corner of the planet are heeding the city’s call, reinventing it with every passing day: DJs, celebrity chefs, architects, designers, journos and it seems even cricket is getting a look in.

Avril Lavigne played Shanghai the week before I was in town. The biggest names in fashion are in Shanghai every tick of the clock. A brief glance at the shop windows is testimony to why.

One of the coolest fashion parades ever had to be the one staged at the Great Wall. Big Bruce was one of the organisers. Tough gig – AB would have been proud of the way you kept an eye on the ball.

Shanghai has plenty of the night stuff for expats, business folk and tourists. Check out the Bund, a strip of elegant neo-classical mansions along the Huangpu River, which would be at home in Budapest or London. Once the site of the various concessions, where expats carved out chunks of prime land for their businesses and homes, it’s also not a bad place to start trawling Shanghai’s best niteries.

On a midweek evening, Bar Rouge cooks with a mix of suave Shanghaiese, well-heeled expats from every corner of the globe and a few tourists. Sure, the odd drongo like me will lob but that’s outside the norm.

This is the cherry on the top floor of No. 18 on the Bund, its co-inhabitants include a Cartier salon, Sens & Bund restaurant and Venetian glass everywhere you look.

Designed by Imaad Rahmouni, who has sat at the feet of uber-designer Philippe Starck, it’s the St Tropez of the Bund, and one of the city’s grooviest bars on the strip.

Stunning babes are here but don’t front up in a pair of boardshorts and a rugby league T-shirt and yell something like, “Garrrn sarrn, bung a middy to the lowie. What’s the Gene Tunney?” (Translation: “Young man, a mid-size beverage for the generous young lady. How much money for the drink?”)

You can prop yourself up with pillows to gaze out over the Huangpu River to the forest of high-rises that make up the new suburb of Pudong spearheaded by the Oriental Pearl TV tower which I jogged around to the bemusement of locals. The Olympics are in Beijing next year and I don’t think locals have seen anyone so unfit!

In the interests of research I also fronted up at the Cloud 9 establishment, perched, as the name indicates, on the 87th floor above the Grand Hyatt. Open from 6pm weekdays and 11am weekends, it stands 152 metres above ground.

You can look out on the building from which Tom Cruise dangled in Mission Impossible III (but unfortunately he managed to hang on!), the Super Brand Mall, said to be China’s largest (a title most likely superseded by now), and the 101-storey building under construction next door, as financiers compete for the grandeur of building this year’s tallest building.

Pretty much everywhere in Shanghai will be slick, it will be chic. But for me, maybe it’s a lot of years spent in Asia, there’s nothing that beats just sitting down at a noodle stall and watching the world go by, although it’s much faster now. Thankfully, that side of Shanghai still abounds and there’s no better place to be.

Places to suss out Xintiandi

Xintiandi

Meaning “new heaven and earth”, Xintiandi is Shanghai’s most hyped development. This precinct of traditional Shanghai shikumen (stone gate) residences, converted into a pedestrian quarter of fashionable boutiques, restaurants and bars, has set national standards for urban renewal. Cool place to hang out though. I caught a killer blus band from New Orleans.

Shanghai Concert Hall 523 Yan’an Dong Lu

The Nanking Concert Hall, built in 1930, was considered such an important cultural heritage symbol that the government spent $19.7million to move it 66 metres and save it from demolition, so I read.

Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall People’s Square, 100 Renmin Da Dao

Take a journey into Shanghai’s future ahead of the 2010 World Expo, Shanghai’s much-anticipated opportunity to eclipse Beijing’s 2008 Olympics spot in the limelight. You have to be in Shanghai to gauge just how big a deal Expo is to this city.

Yuyuan Gardens

A bit kitchy but a buzz. Thirty landscaped garden scenes, tourists (mostly Chinese) and snack stalls. The sights and smells are wonderful. Old Chinese buildings, friendly vibe. Then there’s street after street of shops.

Oriental Pearl TV Tower

I don’t like this ‘landmark’ but it’s an integral part of the skyline. It is supposed to represent “twin dragons playing with pearls” and I can’t quite see it. But its 350-metre-high viewing platform provides great views of the city on a clear day.

Shanghai Museum People’s Park, 2 Renmin Da Dao.

This collection of 10 galleries bringing together 120,000 cultural relics is probably China’s best, according to people a lot more clued up than me.

Grand Prix

I wasn’t there for the race but I did go out there to take some snaps of the SLS at the track complex. Superb facility by the same people who sketched the Bahrain circuit.