City of sin and decadent exoticism in the 1920s and 30s, theatre of vicious conflict during wartime and Japanese invasions, cradle of Chinese Communism but neglected during the Cultural Revolution, flag bearer of modern China’s market reforms, inspiration for lurid novels, films and cocktails – Shanghai is probably the most evocative city for an outsider in the whole of China. Beijing may be more mysterious but Shanghai offers a headier brew of half-digested, semi-mythical images and preconceptions.

For the second city of the world’s oldest surviving ancient civilisation, Shanghai is surprisingly new. Literally ‘Above the Sea’, Shanghai is a port city on the Huangpu River, where the Yangtze River empties into the East China Sea.

The area was marshland until the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1126), when refugees from the Mongols and other northern nomad invaders settled the area. By 1291, Shanghai had become a county capital. The growing city got its wall in 1553 (prophetically, against Japanese pirates) and a customs house in 1685. Shanghai was only thrust into the spotlight in June 1842, when a British seaborne force captured it during the First Opium War.

One of five cities pried open to Western colonial trade by the Treaty of Nanjing, Shanghai gained foreign districts controlled by the colonial powers – the British and American Concessions (soon combined as the International Settlement) and the French Concession. This hybrid city boomed as the focus of Chinese colonial trade and Qing Dynasty China uneasily coexisted with Western power for almost a century.