I love Shanghai. There’s no doubt about it. From my first glimpse of it nearly a year ago, I’ve been hooked. I could wax lyrical about it for hours, extolling its many virtues and vices. Since I moved here permanently just over six months ago, my love has grown. Shanghai, like any international metropolis, tends to suck you in and keep you there. Until last week, I hadn’t left the city limits. This is unusual for me; back in the UK barely a month went by without my flying or driving somewhere for the weekend. Here, I haven’t even been to Suzhou or Hangzhou. I have every intention of doing so, but Shanghai has so much that it’s difficult to tear yourself away.

But eventually matters were taken out of my hands. My parents were in China to visit me, and wanted to go to Beijing for a couple of days. Of course, a trip to the capital had always been on my ‘to do’ list, so I was more than willing. What I hadn’t expected was just how different the two cities are, and what I learned about each from the other.

Photo: Fred Dintenfass

The first thing that struck me as we drove into the city was the wide boulevards that, even in the moonlight, lent an air of austerity. The buildings were noticeably lower – few over ten stories – unlike Shanghai’s sprawl of high-rises. This meant that the sky spread out like a canvas. Riding the metro the next day, I was surprised by how empty it was compared to the crush of People’s Square and Zhongshan Park stations. It was cheaper too: two kuai per ride instead of four. As for the taxis, in comparison to Shanghai’s motley fleet of grubby pastel-shaded VWs, Beijing’s are neat, polished bon-bon bugs in green and navy blue with a fetching yellow stripe.

I was surprised at how few foreign faces I saw, even at the historic sites. In Shanghai you can barely walk two blocks before running into a fellow laowai, nor have a latte in Boonna or Coffee Tree without sharing your table with a Moleskine notebook or iMac.

Photo: Susie Gordon

Visiting the Great Wall at Simatai (the least touristy of all the sites accessible from Beijing) provided another rare treat – complete silence. Sitting in a cable car, trawling up the mountainside towards the watch towers, it hit me like the deep hum of a temple bell – absolute silence. It was the first truly tranquil moment I’d experienced since leaving Lancashire, and it was beautiful. In Shanghai there is always noise, be it the yell of traffic, the chatter of a Shanghainese quarrel, or just the buzz of air-con.

I was lucky enough to be in Beijing just as the seasons were changing; the chill of winter replaced by the first fronds of warmth blossoming in the earth, and again that duck-egg blue tundra of sky fleeced with clouds as the evenings drew in.

 

 

There was something refreshing and humbling about being in an unfamiliar city. Six months in Shanghai have afforded me a somewhat complacent attitude to my once-exotic adopted city. Turning up in Beijing reignited that old excitement that fades as streets imprint a map into your brain.

Photo: Fred Dintenfass

It’s incredibly easy to become entrenched in a city like Shanghai and forget that there is a huge country surrounding it. The metropolis becomes a microcosm, a vortex from which it’s often hard to extricate yourself. One working day leads to another, followed by all too brief weekends, and before you know it, half a year has passed. But visiting other cities makes you realise what a vast and multi-faceted country we have at our doorstep, and it would be criminal to end the expat experience without having tasted just a bit of it.

But possibly the most poignant lesson I learned in Beijing was that I have come to see Shanghai as home. On the plane home I was suddenly gripped by that faint nostalgia bordered with excitement that you get when you’re homeward bound. In the taxi queue outside Hongqiao arrivals, there was a canny old woman selling cigarette lighters, figuring that people coming off flights would be aching for a fag and willing to pay inflated prices for a flame. Yet cannier still were the guys – complete strangers – who were passing a still-lit butt between them down the taxi queue for whomever needed it. Pure Shanghai. I fell deeper in love with this crazy, wonderful place. I was home.

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