Shanghai

Shanghai is unlike anywhere else in the world. The scale of it, the sheer vertical ambition of Pudong across the river, the density of it, the speed at which it moves, is genuinely disorienting when you arrive from anywhere in Europe. And then you walk along the Bund, with the Art Deco and neoclassical buildings of the old International Settlement on one side and the tower skyline of Pudong on the other, and something about the contrast makes perfect sense.

The French Concession is the neighbourhood I return to again and again in Shanghai. Tree-lined avenues, lane houses from the 1920s and 30s, independent coffee shops and restaurants, the sense of a neighbourhood that has somehow maintained its human scale against the city's constant appetite for redevelopment. In the mornings, elderly residents do tai chi in the small parks. In the evenings, the same parks fill with families. It is the most liveable part of one of the world's least liveable cities, in the best possible sense.

The Yu Garden and the surrounding old city gave me the clearest sense of what Shanghai looked like before the International Settlements and before the towers. Classical Chinese garden design, rockeries, pavilions, ponds, covered walkways, surrounded by the most extraordinary bazaar of small shops and food stalls. It is chaotic and beautiful and completely unlike anything in Europe, which is exactly why I kept going back.