Stepping out onto a street in China is always an assault on the senses: an ever-shifting cornucopia of unfamiliar sights, sounds and smells. Even in a city as relatively international as Shanghai, a 10-minute walk invariably leaves you feeling exhilarated, unclean and slightly unsettled.
So after a three-year break from visiting – a period in which China largely isolated itself from the wider world through its ‘zero Covid’ policy – you might expect our first experience of a Shanghai street to be particularly intense.