On our most recent trip there, we again arrived from Hong Kong, but we perceived nothing like the old, jarring contrast. Although Hong Kong still looks terrific — it, too, has undergone a building boom, and it remains a highly popular travel and shopping destination — Shanghai feels like the trendier, more up-and-coming metropolis. "Shanghai has the vitality, energy and optimism that are inherent in a place that is developing rapidly," says Australian restaurateur Michelle Garnaut. "That's not true of Hong Kong, which is more sophisticated and in a very different phase."
Garnaut's restaurants reflect those differences. Her M at the Fringe, in Hong Kong, which she opened in 1989, has a quiet, clubby feel. In Shanghai her hugely popular M on the Bund, launched a decade later, on the top floor of the renovated 1920s Nissin Shipping Company building and with a spectacular view of the Bund and the Pudong business district, across the river, is bigger, noisier — and much more profitable.
Shanghai has become cosmopolitan again. It's not "the Paris of the East," its sobriquet in the 1920s and 1930s, when the French, Brits and Americans called the shots, as they had ever since divvying up the city among themselves after the 19th-century Opium Wars. But Shanghai is once again attracting a large expatriate community. It's also experiencing a huge influx of Chinese from Taiwan, Singapore and other parts of Asia, a population that is dominated by businessmen intent on getting their share of the city's highly visible new wealth. Starbucks coffee shops are a dime a dozen (and their lattes cost about as much as in the United States), and almost every big high-end fashion brand has one or, increasingly, several stores here: Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Hermès, Ferragamo, Versace — the list goes on and on.
That means parties practically every night as new places open their doors. "If you're a professional partygoer, this would be your town," says Thomas Connolly, the Irish general manager of the recently opened Jean Georges restaurant, which is located in Three on the Bund, a Mecca of pricey eateries and boutiques in a renovated building. "It's all happening right here, right now."
During our visit, the Bentley dealership for the Shanghai region was displaying its latest offering in front of the entrance to Three on the Bund. The dealership's general manager, Leo L.S. Wong, proudly explained that over the past year, it had sold twenty cars ranging in price from about $360,000 to $1.5 million. Regal Chinese models posed for photos in front of the Bentley, but the scene elsewhere was equally startling. Instead of the drab unisex look of yesteryear, Shanghai's young women sported the newest fashions, highlights in their hair and delicate makeup. Although street markets and peddlers offered plenty of fake brand-name products ("You want Rolex?" was a constant refrain), the truly fashion conscious wouldn't be caught dead wearing knockoffs.
You can still find communist kitsch, such as Mao statues and key chains, for sale, but it's easy to forget that you are in a Communist country. Of course, politics remains in the hands of the party bosses, and woe to those intrepid few who dare raise the topic of human rights. But no one apologizes for the fact that money and the market, not Marxist ideology, dictate the dizzying pace of change. And if the distance from the rigid old system is measured purely by economic performance, the new China has leapfrogged way ahead of Russia, which, unlike China, formally renounced its Communist identity — and did so more than a decade ago.
Shanghai is also trying to make its mark as an entertainment and cultural center. Last September saw the running of the Formula One Shanghai Grand Prix race, and the city is already preparing for its moment in the sun as the site of World Expo 2010. The glittering Shanghai Grand Theatre has boasted such singers as Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, as well as musicals like Cats and Les Misérables. (At other venues, pop singers Elton John and Whitney Houston, among others, drew huge audiences last year.) On the theater's sixth-anniversary evening, we dropped in for a performance of Swan Lake by the visiting Hong Kong Ballet, part of Hong Kong Culture Week.
