A Tale of Two Cities

I couldn't help but draw comparisons when I visited the H and the S from my HSBC back account. Both cities are Chinese, but heavily influenced by the west, and specifically Britain, for over a century.

View of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak

I started my journey in the "H" - Hong Kong. And promptly fell a little bit in love (sorry New York & London). From the towering skyscrapers, to the surprisingly green and pleasant Victoria Peak, to the teeming streets full of restaurants and shops - the city is buzzing.

Inside Man Mo Temple

Nestled among the modernity are some lovely traditional temples, plenty of shops selling Chinese medicine and restaurants with delicious dim sum and other Cantonese delicacies.

Tastiness at the Luk Yu Teahouse

Even though it is now part of China, Hong Kong is a separate Special Administrative Region, with the same legal and social system and free market economy that it developed under British rule. Which made this city the ideal place for this limey to start her journey, at the intersection of Britain and China.

Hong Kong at night

The "S", Shanghai, has utterly transformed over the past few decades. To the east, a new, shiny, skyscraper-laden Pudong district dominates the skyline, even though it is only twenty years old.

Pudong skyline

But the old foreign impact on Shanghai, developed by the British, French and American settlements in the city during the 19th century, is still palpable in Puxi, the west side of the Huangpu river. It is home to the Bund (the concesssion era equivalent of Wall Street in Shanghai) and other western style buildings.

Puxi in Shanghai

I ended up staying in the French concession, which is now full of boutique shops, lovely hotels and delicious restaurants. Much like Hong Kong, Shanghai didn't really feel like the rest of China. Even though it, like Hong Kong, is privy to the same pollution as almost every other city I visited, the focus on free market finance and european fashions made it feel semi-western and therefore familiar.

Yuyuan Gardens

Some parts of the city are still most definitely Chinese, like the gorgeous Ming-era Yuyuan gardens in the Old Town. But the recent trend in the city definitely seemed to be skewed more west than east. Small wonder that most of the westerners I met living in China, lived here.

Hazy view from the 100th floor of the World Financial Center