People always used to tell me ‘Shanghai’s not real China’. I heard it from locals, from expats like myself, from visitors who had spent a week or two in Xi’an or Chongqing or Lijiang and thought they should advise me that I wasn’t getting the real deal. What they wanted me to know was that Shanghai, a hub of foreign trade and business, with some of its central districts full of stores like Nike and H&M, was not enough. It was too much like home and not enough like what a foreigner should experience in China.