Shanghai

Shanghai began as a fishing and cotton-trading settlement on the Huangpu, part of Huating county, and was walled in 1554 against raids by Japanese pirates. It was prosperous but provincial until the Treaty of Nanking ended the First Opium War in 1842 and opened it to foreign trade. British, American and French settlements grew north of the old city; the British and American areas merged into the International Settlement, which ran its own council, police and courts, while the French Concession stayed separate.

Refugees from the Taiping war in the 1850s and 1860s poured into the settlements, and the city became China's commercial capital: banks and trading houses on the Bund, cotton mills along the creeks, the country's first railways, newspapers and film studios. By the 1920s and 1930s it was one of the world's great ports, known for its nightlife, gangs, publishing and politics. The Chinese Communist Party held its first congress here in 1921. Japanese forces fought battles for the city in 1932 and again in 1937, and Hongkou sheltered thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe, some 30,000 of whom reached the city in the 1930s.

After 1949 many businesses and families left for Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Shanghai became a disciplined industrial city that sent most of its revenue to the central government. The turn came in 1990, when the farmland of Pudong across the river was opened for development; within two decades it held a financial district, and the city hosted the World Expo in 2010. Shanghai is now China's financial centre and the site of the world's busiest container port.

Shanghai's own idea of itself is captured in the term haipai — a style formed by mixing foreign and Chinese, commercial and modern, as against the scholarly traditions of the north. It showed in 1930s cinema and popular song, in the qipao dress, in publishing and advertising, and in the jazz bands of the riverfront hotels; it shows today in design, fashion weeks, contemporary galleries along the western riverbank and a café scene of unusual size.

The city has a long literary record. Lu Xun spent his last years in Hongkou, Eileen Chang set her stories in its apartment blocks and lanes, and generations of writers have described the shikumen, the stone-gate lane houses where families shared courtyards, kitchens and gossip. Wu-language performing arts survive alongside: Shanghai opera, known as huju, and Yue opera from neighbouring Zhejiang, both performed in the city's theatres.

Shanghainese is the marker of local identity, distinct enough from Mandarin to be unintelligible to outsiders and spoken less by each generation. Residents have a reputation across China for being commercially sharp, careful with money, precise and a little superior, and for taking food and clothes seriously. Morning life in the parks is a fixture — tai chi, ballroom dancing, badminton, choirs and the marriage market in People's Park, where parents advertise their children's details on umbrellas.

About 25 million people live in the municipality, roughly two-fifths of them migrants from other provinces without local household registration, which affects access to schooling and housing. The centre is dense and mid-rise; most residents live in high-rise estates in the outer districts and commute long distances on the metro, and property prices are among the highest in the country.

The economy runs on finance, trade, professional services and technology, alongside a large industrial base making cars, chemicals, ships, aircraft parts and semiconductors, and a port complex at Yangshan and along the Yangtze that handles more containers than any other. Headquarters, exchanges and the free trade zone concentrate national business here, and the city draws graduates from across China.

Daily rhythms are urban and fast: breakfast bought at a stall on the way to the metro, a canteen or delivery lunch, long working hours, and shopping and eating that continue late. Older residents dominate the mornings in the parks and the wet markets. The two-month lockdown of 2022 left a strong mark on how people talk about the city. Ageing, the cost of housing, the pressure of schooling and the steady demolition and rebuilding of old lane neighbourhoods are the recurring concerns.

Shanghai cooking, benbang cai, is sweeter and more soy-heavy than most Chinese regional styles. Hongshao rou, pork belly red-braised with soy sauce, sugar and rice wine until it glazes, is the archetype; so are braised gluten with mushrooms, drunken chicken steeped in wine, and river shrimp. Autumn belongs to hairy crabs from the delta lakes, steamed whole and eaten with ginger and vinegar.

The snack tradition is what most visitors meet first. Xiaolongbao, the soup-filled steamed dumplings associated with Nanxiang in the western suburbs, are eaten with vinegar and shredded ginger; shengjian mantou are thicker buns fried until the base is crisp and the filling still liquid. Wontons come large with greens and pork or small in clear soup; congyou banmian is noodles tossed in oil infused with slowly fried spring onion. Breakfast is the 'four heavenly kings' — fried dough sticks, soy milk, sticky rice rolls and griddled sesame flatbread — sold from lane stalls.

The city eats from everywhere else too: hotpot and spicy Sichuan kitchens, Cantonese dim sum, Japanese and Korean restaurants in the western districts, and the Western dishes adapted a century ago into Haipai cuisine, such as breaded pork cutlet and borscht thickened with tomato. Coffee has become a local habit rather than an import, with roasteries dense in the former concession, and huangjiu, the amber rice wine of the region, is still drunk warm with crab.