It is a place for the rich and the poor, the adventurous and the timid, the entrepreneurial and the intellectual, the accomplished and the aspiring.
It is Shanghai.
I went there for college in 1985 and left the city in 1993 to come to the U.S. The city left an indelible mark on my being. Although not thinking of it at the time, I now consider those eight years one of the most beautiful periods in my life, and the city my second hometown.
My first hometown of Zhejiang Province provided me with memories of blooming trees, majestic mountains, and clear flowing rivers. It also made me cherish the close bonding of neighbors who knew each other for generations, the summer evenings of children playing and chasing each other under the star-studded sky.
My second hometown Shanghai, on the other hand, taught me the endless possibilities of a huge metropolitan city. It was there that I tasted foods from all the provinces in the country, met people who became my lifelong friends, and learned to deal with selfish calculating girls and uncaring ungentlemanly boys. It was also there that I got to know what dating was, met a boy who later became my husband.
Zhejiang made my childhood. Shanghai shaped my youth.
I love reading Lisa See’s New York Times best sellers like Dreams of Joy. Shanghai under her pen was a dazzling paradise of night clubs, dancing, fashion, and fun. But that was in the 1930s and 1940s, before the…