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?

For those of you who still reminisce wistfully about a bygone era in the Shanghai of the '20s and '30s when it was christened 'Paris of the East', the 'Pearl of the Orient' (also known surreptitiously as the 'Whore of the Orient'), perhaps a quick dash to this city today, will quell your haunting nostalgia. While the seething ambience of reckless opium traders fuelling sexual wantonness and exotic dancing girls spinning to delirious music may not quite be the order of the day, there is no doubt, that a unique type of decadence has bequeathed its lustre on this neo Gotham City.

Today's Shanghai - the engine room of China - is on turbo mode. Its development has been so rapid and so relentless that at one point 40 per cent of the cranes in the world were employed in Shanghai alone, to raise monstrous skyscrapers in record time. Walking down the Bund facing the Pudong skyscrapers (which incidentally, house 10,000 foreign companies), don't be surprised if the local Chinese look as bewildered as you do at the mélange of buildings towering over all. It's easier to believe that an alien culture descended on earth and spawned this space age station overnight, rather than it being the fruits of the hidden toils of mainland Chinese.

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.Simultaneously, Shanghai Art Museum hosted the Shanghai Biennale, one of Asia's leading art festivals, focusing on the communion between art and science. Sharing sacred space with well known international luminaries, were artists of Chinese origin (Hong Donglu's three dimensional images of Buddha superimposed on cartoons) whose works stood out for their deep undercurrents of society beginning to question 'lofty' urban ideas - spiritual inertia, consumerism and personal isolation in supersonic boomtowns. On the streets, taxi drivers were abuzz with talks of the first Spanish bullfight to be held in the Shanghai Sports Stadium, while concierge attendants talked about The Phantom of the Opera gearing to sweep the city and the chandelier in Andrew Lloyd- Weber's signature opulence.

A walk down Xintiandi's entertainment district (floor area of 60,000 square metres, catering to 30,000 people a day), you will notice the chic-quotient of a country that till recently was cycling around a rambling old space with straw hats and dumpling baskets. Here, a labyrinth of old Shikumen (stone gate) homes have been restored to house some very hip boutiques, bars and restaurants with names like Joy Luck Club (displaying precious oriental denim coats), Layefe Home (avant-garde oriental knick-knacks),TMSK-Tou Ming Si Kao (building made entirely of glass) and Che (combination of Tapas bar, cigar lounge and salsa). The fact is that every entrepreneurial Chinese whether based in Taiwan, Hong Kong or the US, is coming home (after fleeing the Cultural Revolution in 1949) to sow seeds and reap very quick benefits. Vincent Lo, a Hong Kong property tycoon, ploughed in $170 million to make Xintiandi come alive; and 400,000 Taiwanese who now live in Shanghai, brought $1.7 billion in investment contracts to the city last year, 10 times what they invested just three years before (Time Asia, September 2004).

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! Really, their ascent is breathless. And in Shanghai you can sweat in style. Just head straight to the Evian Spa on Three on the Bund (restored neo-Renaissance building) with all the luxurious entrapments of serenity. This basically means you sweat nothing but pure Evian. High tea in Yongfoo Elite (private dining villa in the historic French Concession) a chichi club that you will enjoy all the more if I told you that its annual fee is the equivalent to my writer's pay of ten years. So, do enjoy your drink amidst a treasure trove of Chinese antiques.

Shanghai is our window to China, the window that the Politburo has 'allowed' us to peep through. Of course, even behind the euphoria of 'modernisation', there's the Human Rights issue, the sweat shops, green spaces disappearing in Shanghai and the stories about 40,000 factory workers losing a limb each year in the town of Shenzhen. World citizens are so busy grappling with the idea of America being capitalist but acting like a dictatorship and China being communist but trading like a capitalist, that the woes of the common man are just too darn simple, understandable and boring. The premise of this rapid expansion and obsession with large-scale development in China can best be exemplified in what recently appeared in Newsweek: Chinese scientists have been growing tomatoes the size of softballs and cucumbers as long as baseball bats... using seeds that have been shot into space. The seeds are then exposed to seven types of extraterrestrial conditions, from zero gravity and cosmic radiation to subatomic particles. As these space veggies grow back on earth, they are selected for their desirable traits: bulk, appearance or certain nutrients…. Moral of the story - if they can do this to their veggies….

This Orwellian drama will however be lost to an entire generation of 'One Child Policy' families whose only reality may be TV reality shows, Super Size Me Burgers and Fendi eyewear. Who's George Orwell? Many are gleeful that the 'single child syndrome' (spoilt brats who get a Ferrari at 16 and never learn to share) will make cities like Shanghai the next best place to be a shrink, after LA. Think about it, 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. Urban angst will be addressed in some strange ways. Already, the 'Mistress Killers' (women from the Sichuan province) have set up a network to help Shangainese women 'cope' with their philandering husbands. They not only advise you on marriage but, more importantly, collect hard evidence against cheating husbands that can be used in divorce courts!

But Shanghai is too busy to worry. The city is hurriedly romanticising itself for the West. I am told I should visit Guilin Park, the garden retreat of 1930s Mafia Boss, Pockmarked Huang's, favourite mistress, especially when the fragrant autumn osmanthus is in bloom. With paintings titled Red Devotion and The New Age Cadre, city galleries are choking with Romantic imagery of Communist China; antique streets of Shanghai are sprinkled with Art Deco memorabilia that sit alongside fake copies of The Little Red Book with a robust Mao grinning on its cover. Of course, you can go see the ancient Jade collection in Shanghai Museum - jade that provides a link between humans and gods and wards off evil, according to the Chinese. But it's unlikely that you will pass by any monument of worship. Even in the constant drone of mammoth cranes and drilling machines, there is a lull of spiritual listlessness in the air.

As my plane takes off from this incredible city of 16.7 million people, en route to Slum-bai, er, Mumbai, of about the same population, I think about many things…. They've taken cycles out of the Shanghai city centre, I wonder when cows will be packed off ours. Will I live to see the day that the darn Worli to Nariman Point Sea Link is completed? In 10 years, they say China is going to be the second largest economy in the world and India, well, currently the WTO dictate is weighing heavy on us. The thing is, the idea of development is so double-edged. Remember the tale of Icarus? It goes like this: Icarus and his father were trapped on the island of Crete. The father builds wings made of feather and wax to attempt an escape. Father warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, or else the wings will melt. But young, arrogant and feisty Icarus, consumed by this power of flight, soars heavenwards. His wings melt and he drowns in the sea. If you don't fancy this elaborate Greek allegory, you can resort to the American theory of 'Crash and Burn'. But let's hope this magical city of Shanghai lives up to the prophecy of the great Confucius over and over again: Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.