Shanghai

Nanjing Lu leaves nothing to the imagination, a capitalist monstrosity eating away at the very heart of China’s communist struggle. The Bund, Technology Park, People’s Park, modern Pudong and even the French quarter follow in its ravenous footsteps. It’s just not China, at least not the China I expected.

Heading away from tooting taxis and angry hordes of money-wielding tourists, I wander through the backstreets of central Shanghai, twisting and turning ever further from the glistening Metropolis and its Starbucks sheep.

As one wonders away from the metropolis, tall glass buildings give way to low-rise suburbia. Street life builds, just a few side stalls selling puppies and freshly cut pineapples at first, then chatty hair salons and busy cafes pop up, carpenters tapping mindlessly as antiques traders scream through megaphones. Suddenly you’re center-stage in an unfinished Sino-Shakespearean masterpiece. In Shanghai, the old China exists by thriving at street-level.

Hairdressers and butchers deftly slice away as if the same, fish mongers man-handle yesterday’s catch from shallow coffins, dropping them on ubiquitous scale-encrusted wooden chopping blocks, hacking and scraping until ready for lunch.

Toads hang in nets, gerbils share tanks with terrapins, pigeons display plumage to the highest bidder, and desperate crabs routinely make a bid for freedom. Visceral sound and colour erupt from all directions, crimson-red blood sailing down chocked gutters, carrying with it glistening scales and entrails of all descriptions.

Quacking ducks are plucked from tiny cages and plunged headfirst into boiling water, their screech only drowned out by classic romantic ballads ejecting from a neighbouring speaker, volume at 11, naturally.

Happily no one seems to notice a lone wanderer, so sidestepping a few unidentifiable objects I make my way past squirming shells, blue lobsters, hairy crabs and their less-hairy cousins tied up into neat little bundles ready to drop in the pot. Steam and incense bellow from cook-pots and cloud my already dazzled vision making me step in something so viscous it almost takes my shoe off.

Exhausted, I find myself off the main thoroughfare and sit at a small table, order a cold Tsingtao with noodles and contently watch the chaos unfold for an hour or two. Everything ticking along just like clockwork.