“Beautiful chaos,” said the musician in the old French Club as he raised his vodka soda to toast my first evening in Shanghai. “That’s why I have to be in Shanghai right now.” I could not but agree. Give me Shanghai over Beijing any day. The following afternoon, as the Trumps had tea in the Forbidden City in the cosseting embrace of the Communist party, I was hurtling through the old French Concession on a swanky yellow and very capitalist bicycle. Ahead of me on a rival orange bike was the FT’s Asia Editor swishing through the rush hour — often taking it head on.
We were bound for the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, inspired by the setting of Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing
, her mesmerising novel about music and mindlessness in the age of Mao. But my mind was on the future, not the past — and not just Shanghai’s but London’s and other global cities too. A transport revolution is under way.