Shanghai is one of the most famous cities in China. It was once called the ‘Paris of the East’, but today is regarded to as the ‘Pearl of the Orient’. Shanghai lies at the centre of China’s economic, cultural and commercial growth and is a diverse city that is moving forward at a terrific rate.

This port city can be found at the mouth of Asia’s longest river and has been a commercial port since 1842, and since its conception, it has been open to colonial interest and trade. In its heyday during the 1920s and ‘30s, Shanghai was a hub of nightclubs, French villas and opium dens. Taipans walked with peasants and Jews who had fled persecution in Russia lived peacefully alongside Chinese revolutionaries.