Well, no posts for a while. All of us swapping illnesses, HIHO XX starting new daycare, work, generally overwhelmed by life. In recovery now. So I’ll just put up a link to a James Fallows post about every China resident’s favorite old chestnut: Beijing or Shanghai? It’s a dog or cat, New York or LA, Minneapolis or St. Paul, England or France, Yankees or Mets, [er, tried hard to come up with a pop culture reference involving Survivor or American Idol or something but couldn’t fake it. Sorry] kind of difference which is supposed to say a lot about the person answering it. But it’s enduring because there are such strong distinctions and legitimate reasons to love and hate both of them. Conventional wisdom: Beijing is cultural, artistic, conservative, earthy, genuine. Shanghai is flashy, urbane, international, aristocratic, shallow. But then there are the physical differences: Beijing is enormous and sprawling and divided like an onion by an infinity of super wide ring roads perpetually clogged by traffic jams, while Shanghai is an enormous collection of downtowns and neighborhoods connected by a street network and an increasingly good metro system.
The reason I’m linking, though, is that Fallows raises the awkward question which I have sometimes asked myself: is the reason why I love Shanghai’s urban design above all other Chinese cities because it was laid out and built by foreigners?