The population is ageing rapidly and the last thing you want to see is a generation of selfish children happy to knock out good old granny for her gold capped tooth. Top that with a skewed male-female ratio and China is likely to have the yin kicked out of the yang.

Today's Shanghai - the engine room of China - is on turbo mode. Its development has been so rapid and so relentless that it has left many metropolises, especially Mumbai, far behind in its breathless ascent to becoming a 'world city', says Bandana Tewari

So here I am sipping the meanest Martini in the Glamour Bar. Feet are tapping everywhere to Cuban mambo; pretty people swish around in Shanghai Tang finesse of rustling silks and starched Mao collars; ears perk up as yet another exotic accent makes itself heard amidst the tingle of champagne glasses; I walk to the terrace garden giddy with anticipation. There lies in front of me, the formidable Pudong skyline, perhaps the closest contender to the Manhattan one. A dainty porcelain beauty replaces my Martini… and I think to myself, if this is communism, what in Mao's world, is capitalism?

Barely 150 years old, Shanghai is an alluring hybrid of East and West. The fact that from the 1800s, it's been a cultural cauldron, is evident in the brownstone architectural delights that you walk past along the Bund. The 1923 Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, built by a British firm, was reputedly the most magnificent building between the Suez and the Bering Straits; Add to this, Shanghai's voracious appetite for revelry and Marxist Mao's 'workers of the world, unite' unleashed a stronger contender in times to come - Hedonists of the world unite!

Hedonism has indeed made a superb comeback, although with a foreboding American lure. In a span of a few weeks, China's first Formula 1 Grand Prix took place where apparently the country's entire annual supply of polystyrene was used to save the circuit track from sinking into a swamp. Followed by the first ever NBA game in China with headlines screaming the homecoming of Yao Ming who plays in America even while displaying a chest-thumping pride for China.

Today, if the greatest Chinese philosopher were alive he would certainly write a chapter on Confucius and the Cosmic Consumer, the cover of which would have a marketing savvy punter with a finger pointing to the sky and his eye squinting hard on the pie. Jostling for space in the open-air market in Xiang Yang Lu, you must allow reverse snobbery to tide over your hunger for all things real. This fake market is a hoot with a Burberry trench going for all of $20! Of course the real stuff is in Nanjing Road. The Pied Pipers of fashion - Bvlgari, Ferrari, Armani, (who has an exclusive store, the size of a football ground in Three on the Bund) and Louis Vuitton (13 all over China and a recently expanded one in Shanghai) have ensured that every conceivable luxury brand gets to do the show-me-da-money jig to about 50 million Chinese who have just turned middle class and have an insatiable appetite for labels!

For the rest of the article, pick up VERVE’s January-February, 2005 issue