Shanghai

Shanghai is a conversation across a river: on the west bank, the Bund, a kilometre and a half of granite banks and hotels that European money raised in the 1920s and that still stand shoulder to shoulder, domes and clocks and lions; on the east bank, Pudong, a skyline that did not exist in 1990 and now holds the second-tallest building on Earth, a pearl on a spike and a bottle-opener, lit every night like a promise kept. Behind the Bund the city runs west along Nanjing Road to People's Square, curls around the round old walled city and its garden, and slows down under the plane trees of the French Concession, where the villas have become cafés and the lanes have become the most pleasant walking in China.

The traveller walks the Bund at seven, before the crowds and with the light on Pudong; takes the ferry across for two yuan, the best view in the city for the least money; goes up the Shanghai Tower for the whole delta; comes back to the Yu Garden early, before the coaches, and crosses the zigzag bridge to the teahouse; loses an afternoon in the French Concession — Huaihai Road, Tianzifang's lanes, Xintiandi's rebuilt shikumen — under the plane trees; eats xiaolongbao where the queue is local; and, at night, sees the Bund again from the Pudong side, when the old banks are lit like a stage set and the river is full of neon boats.

The Guide's honesty: Shanghai is enormous, orderly and easy — the metro is the best way to move, the taxis are honest and the payment apps are the currency, so set one up before you land, with a card that works —; the Bund and the Yu Garden are crowded from ten to five and are yours before and after; the Great Firewall is real: download what you need at home; the plum rains of June and the humidity of August are a climate, not a rumour; the water towns — Zhujiajiao, an hour west — are lovely and full; and Shanghai is not the rest of China, which the Shanghainese will tell you with some pride. It is its own country, with a river down the middle.