Why Traveling To A New City Is Like A Retreat
That part is almost entirely wrong. Three days later, I get off a plane in Shanghai. Lights are streaming all around me from the city’s 7,000 skyscrapers, each of them bathed in a different neon glow, purple or electric blue or green. A Maglev train, flying a few inches above the ground, whisks me into the heart of the labyrinth at 250 miles per hour. I walk through narrow alleyways, Chinese characters exploding around me, and all the teeming energies of 23 million people trying to make their future before tomorrow....