The one thing that stands out about Shanghai is how un-China it is.

Perhaps my perception has been coloured in part by the media, but I recall visits to Beijing very barely resembling Shanghai.

For one, Beijing seems to be China in progression: high-rise buildings popping up, busy roads filled with the de facto ‘national car’—Volkswagens—but a people that still appear to be adapting to an environment changing faster than their culture can catch up. People yelling on the streets, spitting, the occasional ill-fitted ‘Western’ outfit, the obvious designer knock-offs populating every other shoulder.

But Shanghai, bustling and progressing alongside, seems to have adjusted a lot easier to the ‘times’. Frankly, a visit to the downtown district of Xin Tian Di, an enclave of hip and chic Western chain stores (Stella McCartney! Sisley! Fendi!) housed in restored stone Chinese buildings, looks so different from what you’d normally expect of China—even of a mall-littered, consumerist Asian country—that it almost feels like…Singapore.

From the security personnel trawling the quiet grounds to cleaners armed with LED-lit brooms (thus putting Singapore’s OCD to shame in one fell swoop), you could’ve sworn you were in a more regimented, tourist-conscious country…like Singapore.

But that’s the most of day 1 for me. Tomorrow, work starts.

I leave you with a Shanghai-themed t-shirt Vivian was trying to get while she was based here some months ago. Personally, I’d be too embarrassed to wear it. But I’m just a prude like that.