The truth about Shanghai: I spent a few weeks there just mingling and trying to understand the people, and what I dislike about Shanghai is this elitism that se

The truth about Shanghai: I spent a few weeks there just mingling and trying to understand the people, and what I dislike about Shanghai is this elitism that seems to exist among the foreigners living there. I went to some clubs and it was ALL foreign people - and mostly young. Not even the chinese girlfriend on the hand. For the young and foreign, Shanghai is a playground. A place to live 10 times better than back home for half as much. The chinese people and the foreigners seem to be living in different worlds. Shanghai seemed to me a bit like how one would imagine it in the 20s - with a cream of English expatriates and large mass of locals, both of which do not mingle with each other. It was so different in other parts of China. In Sichuan, there were very few foreigners, and those that were there would be in groups of chinese people. In Shenzhen, the foreigners would be clearly business men looking to buy electronics or strike some deals and go home. In Kunming, the foreigners would be tourists. Shanghai reeked to me of old world colonialism. The people were less friendly, less open and more jaded. Through my travels in China, Shanghai was very frankly the place I liked the least. (Hong Kong was great though, it has more foreigners than Shanghai probably, but people seem to have more of the attitude of do-your-thing-I-do-mine)