On Shanghai

"The neon lights of Pudong skyscrapers throb luridly at night, making the "peaceful rise" of China appear, apart from everything else, an occasion for lovers of kitsch. But things are not so peaceful behind the glittering surfaces. The soil is subsiding in newly built-up Pudong; chemical poisons contaminate river waters elsewhere in China; and aggrieved peasants hold hundreds of demonstrations every week.

None of this seems to worry the hundreds of thousands of Chinese cheerfully moving through the shopping malls and the waterfront park in Shanghai. One feels in these great crowds, overhwhelming even to an Indian, not so much life itself, dense, rank or clotting, as the poignancy of the desires of the Chinese people for a better life. It is always a shock to remember the immense suffering China has known in the previous century and it seems petty to begrudge the Chinese shoppers a bit of consumerist self-indulgence."

~From "Steeped in history but striding forward", an article by Pankaj Mishra in the Weekend section of the Financial Times, April 8 and 9, 2006