Visit Shanghai and while you may not see the future -- contrary to what Sydney and Beatrice Webb once foolishly claimed when they visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s -- you will certainly see very little of the past.
There are broad highways, efficient subways, bustling crowds, colorful signboards, hectares of central-district high-rises and kilometers of housing blocks marching into the suburban distance.
The contrast with the sullen, squalid, stagnant, slogan-plastered city I had seen when I had visited Shanghai just 30 years ago with a group of Australian ping-pong players was overwhelming.