For me, a defining memory of Japan was standing next to a small old lady at a pedestrian crossing in Kyoto.  We were in the financial district early on a Saturday morning, so it was just us and this woman.  We hadn't seen a car in fifteen minutes.  Still this lady calmly stood on the curb, waiting for the green man.  The red man said wait, so she waited.  These are the rules we live by.

Now compare that to Shanghai. 

In Shanghai there are no rules.  There aren't even guidelines.  Pedestrians feel no qualms about striding across a busy road when the red man is lit, and conversely cars have no issues with knocking over a few passers-by when they feel like running a red.  Mopeds jump onto the pavement if they think it'll be faster, and cyclists speed the wrong way down the street if they think they can handle it.  And all the time, everyone shouts at one another and honks their horns. 

All in all, Shanghai was a breath of fresh air after Japan.  It's a truly fantastical place.  During the bus journey into town we felt a kind of post-colonial indignation: 'Why wasn't I told that they've build a city twice the size of London, with more skyscrapers than New York, and more bling and bombastic architecture than Vegas???  Are they allowed to do this?  How dare they!'. 

It's definitely a city that's going somewhere fast, though God knows where.  Building sites are everywhere - skyscrapers sprouting overnight under bamboo scaffolding and hordes of labourers work around the clock digging, drilling, laying concrete, welding steel.  Aside from the grand old buildings of the Bund, and the few remaining old tenaments that haven't yet been converted into shopping malls, it's all brand new: communist apartment blocks, skyscraper after skyscraper and here and there the strange western-style mansions of the nouveau-riche.

To try and get a sense of the scale of the place, on our second day in the city we went to the financial district - Pudong - to a bar on the 86th floor of an office building.  After a few drinks, looking down at the million city lights smeared across the Bund it's hard not to feel like you're in the future, staring at some sci-fi metropolis.  If aliens landed and their first impression of Earth was Shanghai they would be very worried indeed: 'They built this city in 20 years, what they hell are they going to be doing in another 20?!'