https://reveries.com/cool_news/2004/october/oct_29a.html
Shanghai Surprise II. Back in the 1940s, it was known as the “Paris of the East,” but today some are calling Shanghai, “The People’s Republic of Starbucks,” reports Veronica Gould Stoddart in USA Today. Consider this: In “the room where Mao founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921,” is “now a yuppified entertainment complex of restored traditional houses called Xintiandi,” where “tourists, expats and moneyed Shanghainese, palming cellphones, pack its hot jazz clubs and cooler-than-cool eateries to dine on risotto of mud crab with black Chinese truffles.” Even more dramatic is the change in Shanghai’s skyline.
