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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Modern Shanghai still has ties to its ancient past

Dan Webster

Above: One of the many food booths in Shanghai's Qibao neighborhood.

When you're a city the size of Shanghai, which in 2013 was estimated at a whopping 23.9 million, you're bound to have a variety of different looks. (That population, by the way, isn't just China's highest but also the world's, giving it a population density of some 9,700 people per square mile.)

Most of us think of Shanghai as that ultra-contemporary place suggested by the Pudong skyline of towering skyscrapers and neon light shows. Yesterday, though, we saw another side of the city, one that speaks of China's ancient past.

Qibao is the place that Lonely Planet calls a refuge for those tired of "Shanghai's incessant quest for modernity." Bound by ancient gates, and boasting long alleyways filled with street-food booths and shops selling everything from kitchen utensils to rare spices to clothing, Qibao (pronounced something like Chee-BOW) is a busy-but-always-intriguing picture of the past.

We walked the length and width of the district, sampling everything from fried tofu to grilled octopus and a curious kind of coconut drink, but mostly just indulging in the bustle of Shanghai street life. This included the multicolored lanterns lighting the narrow lanes, the smells of food and the sounds of everything from singers performing for whomever would listen to the ever-present honks of motorbikes and the scuffle of shoes on the hard stone sidewalks.

No short stay can ever give you a complete picture of what a city has to offer. But so far, Shanghai — the air of which, by the way, is far more breathable than that of China's capital, Beijing — is proving to be what many claim: one of the world's great metropolises.