oh, Shanghai.

Shanghai is polished, cosmopolitan; a shrine to Chinese capitalism. Women toting Chanel bags, wearing Juicy track suits and Salvatore Ferragamo heels are aplenty, even as old ladies with bound feet beg in the Nanjing Road West luxury-shopping district (I emptied all my RMB coins into her instant-noodle money cup).

It is a patchwork city with quirky architecture (spy the bottle-cap building in the right-hand side of the picture below?), lots of cars and criss-crossing flyovers, and old buildings left over from more romantic times.

I’m glad I got to experience it for myself.

Near Pudong financial district. Not sure if you can spot him, but there’s a man sitting between the snails on this grass patch in the middle of intersecting roads.

We visited Tian Zi Fang, a quaint little area reminescent of Seoul’s hip lifestyle areas.

This sweet old auntie told me the doggie was her neighbour’s, and she feeds it lunch every day. And that he had some ‘wai lao’ (caucasian) name, sounding something like ‘zola’? She was so cute.

And so he follows her everywhere.