Artifact A souvenir from the fi eld

artifact

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STREET FIGHTER

On the rooftops with the world’s most daring artist By Rachel Sturtz 74

FINDERS KEEPERS

Hunting for sunken silver in New York Harbor By Grant Stoddard 82

3PD: SHANGHAI

Beijing’s little brother is all grown up. By Laurie Werner

A pair of sturdy, handmade jade chopsticks will come in handy as you explore the delectable world of Shanghai’s soup dumplings.

STREET FIGHTER BY RACHEL STURTZ UNITED.COM OCTOBER 2009 A 26-YEAR-OLD PARISIAN ARTIST TRAVELS TO PLACES THAT ARMIES AVOID TO MAKE SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST COMPELLING, IMPORTANT AND DANGEROUS ART.

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AND ASIDE FROM A FEW OF HIS FRIENDS, NO ONE KNOWS HIS NAME.

OCTOBER 2009 70

A SUNNY DAY IN THE FAVELAS

OF RIO DE JANEIRO. Five young Frenchmen slop wallpaper glue on the steps of a rough stone staircase. Some boys watch them with curiosity. A woman in a colorful tank top climbs past and continues up the stairs, which slice through a steep maze of dilapidated shacks. The Frenchmen have paid two shady characters to guard them, and they occupy the steps above. The woman passes them, turns down one of the narrow alleyways and climbs stairs that fork a dozen times over between homes, like a game of concrete Chutes and Ladders.

The Frenchmen unroll a length of paper as long as the steps are tall—around 100 feet—and smooth the paper over the glue. They’re busy brushing one more layer of glue over the whole thing when, from above, fi ve gunshots pierce the air.

There is no screaming, just the sound of feet in motion and chopped French phrases. “This way!” The team scrambles into the nearest doorway, which leads into a courtyard where people are already huddled against a wall. The artist in charge of the project—a tall man sporting a well-trimmed beard and Ray-Bans who goes only by the name JR—leans out the door and yells, in English, “Kid! Kid!” at a young boy standing alone on the stairs, in the sun, not knowing which way to run. JR reaches out, yanks him in and slams the door shut.

A few minutes later, it’s over. The boys return to the steps and the Frenchmen return to their work. It’s just another day in the favela—except, if you look from a distance, you can see the 20 paper-covered sets of concrete stairs in this slum start to reveal a giant image of a woman’s chin.

BACK IN HIS PARIS STUDIO, JR stands before his newest project: a stack of 40 large box speakers glued and screwed together to form a 10-foot tall oval, which is currently blasting the bass-heavy loop of a heartbeat. He sips an espresso and scratches the top of his forehead, which is hidden beneath a straw fedora. Behind his sunglasses, he squints.

A large black-and-white picture of an older woman’s face is pasted over the speakers. Her eyes bug out and her lips are pursed, and as the speakers throb, sections of her eyes, nose, mouth and forehead move with the heartbeat. JR is pleased. Three days from now, this installation will occupy a wall in Paris’ esteemed Emmanuel Perrotin Gallery, as part of “Stages,” an art exhibition organized by Lance Armstrong to coincide with the Tour de France. The piece is a departure

SELF PORTRAIT Below, JR appears in the eyes of his subject; opposite, a wall in London.

for JR, a 26-year-old Paris native, mostly because it is neither illegally displayed nor four stories tall and affi xed to the side of a building, which is his preferred canvas. (Other canvases of choice include rooftops, swimming pools, buses, trains, crumbling brick, broken doorways.) You get the picture: JR doesn’t do galleries. His last project, the 2007 series “28 Millimetres: Women,” was more typical. Depicting women surviving in diffi cult circumstances, it led JR from Kenya to India to Brazil to take close-up photos of women’s faces and blow them up to superhuman size before pasting them all over various cities.

“JR is able to use art to confront people with a point of view about society without it being political or malicious,” says Marc Schiller, cofounder of international street art blog the Wooster Collective. “Instead, it’s life-affi rming.”

“The media only gives us one angle, and it’s usually from a helicopter circling a riot or war,” JR says, motioning up in the air with a pen made from a bullet casing he found in Rio. “You only see the guns and violence. I’m hoping to give people another angle.”

The walls of his studio are lined with more giant vignettes of faces and eyes, each belonging to the Brazilian, Cambodian, Indian and African women who lined up to have their picture taken. This October, during fashion week no less, Parisians will see these faces on their bridges, banks and city buildings when JR wraps up his project with exhibitions around the city and the release of his book, Women Are Heroes.

But for now, he needs to fi nd two more speakers to even out the left side of the woman’s pulsating face.

“THE KIDS ALWAYS SHOW UP FIRST,” JR says as he opens a photo on his laptop of fi ve Brazilian boys from Morro da Providência, the oldest and most dangerous favela in Rio. Leaning up against one another, laughing with arms crossed, the boys hold sheets of newspaper that they’ve twisted and folded into the shape of guns. Trust takes time in the favelas, which are notoriously hostile to outsiders, and JR relies on the curiosity of its youngest residents to gain access.

In another photo, the boys have returned, and instead of guns, they’re carrying newly constructed newspaper cameras, turning the tables on JR’s crew. This is a good sign. Gaining the adoration of the favela children means the women—the mothers, aunts and sisters—will follow suit. And if the women trust JR, the men—the fathers, uncles and brothers, who are also the drug traffi ckers and street enforcers—will give him the space to work and even spare his life if a “situation” arises. The process is the same in every country he’s visited, hotspots like Kenya, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and India. “He takes risks without a safety net,” says Marco Berrebi, his longtime friend and collaborator. “But by going in with no protection, he’s relating to people on a human level.”

JR fi rst came to Rio last year, after a particularly brutal event caught his attention. In December 2007, the Brazilian government began a program to rehabilitate a crumbling favela. To ensure the safety of the workers, soldiers accompanied them. What should have been a feel-good gesture to the residents quickly disintegrated into a nightmare that summer, when soldiers carted off three “unruly” boys.

The poor in Rio are well-versed in corruption, but what happened next knocked them to their knees: Instead of taking the boys to jail, the soldiers handed them over to drug lords from a rival favela. The traffi ckers killed them and tossed the bodies into the garbage.

The media broadcast the story globally, shining a light on the endemic corruption. JR watched the news from his Paris apartment. Two months later, he landed in Rio, armed with a camera and a supply of wheat paste.

EVEN AS AN 18-YEAR-OLD GRAFFITI ARTIST in Paris, JR had an aff ection for forgotten places. His earliest work—tiny tags that read “JR was here”—were sprayed under electric boxes in Metro tunnels and hidden corners of rooftops. His only fans were fellow artists and vagabonds.

“When I started, it felt like I was walking on the moon and leaving the fi rst human mark,” he says. “I knew then that graffi ti only speaks to people who like graffi ti. But I soon realized that photography would speak to everyone.”

When he switched to photos, he started small, shooting pictures of his friends spray-painting around Paris. Then he’d print out the black-and-white images, return to the place he shot them and quickly glue them to the wall. Thirty seconds

later, he was done, running down an alleyway before the police caught on.

Soon, documenting his friends wasn’t enough. “Graffi ti was about the action,” says JR. “As I began to paste bigger pictures, I wanted more. And when I began going to other cities, it became about concept.”

The fi rst concept was social unrest. He turned his lens to the youth involved in the 2005 Paris riots, which led to his fi rst complete project, 2006’s “Portrait of a Generation.” As part of the exhibition, he pasted the photos around the ghettos in Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois, to the youths’ delight, and then wallpapered the wealthy arrondissements in Paris, to the residents’ disgust.

After that he made “Face 2 Face,” photographing Israelis and Palestinians who held the same jobs—actors, musicians, hairdressers—and pasted their images together along the West Bank and on shops in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He wanted to see if people could tell the diff erence between the two faces.

“I realized in the Middle East that there are places in the world where people have no concept of art, especially the kind you’d fi nd in the street,” says JR. “In Paris, people can walk by street art and recognize it and put it in a frame. But in the Middle East, the photos actually made people stop and ask questions. And the discussion it creates is far stronger than my message. That is the purpose of art.”

Whenever he goes into a community, JR sits down with restaurant owners, businessmen and priests to explain his project and get their blessing to paste on their walls. Even so, it’s generally illegal. City offi cials consider JR’s work vandalism, and they’re often confused when a business owner charges up to defend him as they try to make an arrest.

Which is why when the media comes calling, he (usually) lets his work do the talking. He prefers to be anonymous, so much so that no one outside his circle of friends knows his real name, he never attends his exhibitions (his assistant Emile goes in his stead) and almost never grants interviews.

His intentions at the start of a project are simple: shoot and paste. Occasionally, though, he gets much more involved. After a few days of photographing the women in Kenya, he pasted the roofs with vinyl pictures instead of paper to protect the shoddy homes from rain. In Rio, he turned an empty house into a community center for the

PAPER TRAIL Clockwise, Rio, Paris, Cambodia and Liberia. Opposite and below, trains in Kenya children (which he continues to finance) and rebuilt a home for one of the favela’s poorest families by hiring local men to do the job. Finally, when he finishes each project, he creates a special-edition book of stories and photos for the community he’s visited.

“JR goes to see these people to create something with them,” says Berrebi. “There is no stage, no border. Whatever he creates belongs to them.”

“They are so proud of their story,” says JR, fl ipping through one of the oversize books. “They are the true owners of these photos.”

RACHEL STURTZ, whose street art experience is limited to hopscotch chalk drawings, is a writer living in New York City.

// IT’S A HOT MIDSUMMER MORNING ON ARTHUR KILL, A CROWDED 10-MILE TIDAL STRAIT THAT SEPARATES STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK, FROM THE INDUSTRIAL MAINLAND OF NEW JERSEY. //

In the distance, highlights of the world’s most famous skyline emerge: the Empire State Building, the twinkling spire of the Chrysler Building. Factories and warehouses line the shore, and dozens of rusting, crumbling hulks of scuttled and abandoned ships sit in the tidal mud near the riverbanks.

It’s the mud that interests Ken Hayes. More specifi cally, what lies beneath the mud. Tall and lanky, with a graying beard and an easy laugh, Hayes is a 56-year-old scientist who specializes in fi nding things underwater. His Jersey-based company, Aqua Survey, Inc., usually spends its days engaged in pretty mundane stuff : dredging, marine construction, soil and sediment toxicology, and locating the surprisingly prodigious amount of unexploded ordnance lurking in the waters around the United States. But today, Hayes is working on his favorite— and potentially most profi table—project: fi nding the lost Guggenheim silver, valued at around $26 million.

Standing on the deck of his 72-foot research craft, the Robert E. Hayes (named after his father), which looks more like a miniature oil rig than a seagoing vessel, Hayes is feeling optimistic. Three 80-foot-tall iron legs pierce the boat’s fl at deck; at Hayes’ command, one of the crewmen pushes a series of levers, and the legs lower onto the river bottom 25 feet below. A minute later, the hull is lifted out of the water, transforming the vessel into a stable platform. Workers busily prepare the sled—a custom-made, high-tech metal detector about the size of two picnic tables—to be lowered in the water. One of Aqua Survey’s smaller boats, the Delaware, will drag it across the river bottom as it scans the muck.

So how did this silver trove end up in Arthur Kill? The trail starts in Manhattan, not far from the Chrysler Building. Before the silver hit the river bottom, it belonged to a wealthy mining baron named Meyer Guggenheim, whose son Solomon was a philanthropist and an art collector. Solomon commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build the famous Fifth Avenue museum bearing the family name in part with the fortune Meyer amassed from mining and smelting metals. An accident that befell the famous family business 106 years ago is the reason this trash-strewn shipping channel is buzzing with activity.

Here’s what Hayes knows: At 2 a.m. on September 27, 1903, a tugboat called Ganoga departed a pier in the East River towing a chain of 14 river barges to a smelting plant 15 miles away in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. However, a drunken tug crew—“the dumbest skunks I ever had do with,” reported one sailor—lashed the barges together sloppily. At some point after the convoy passed the Statue of Liberty and entered the Arthur Kill, the last one in line started listing to starboard, and the silver bars slowly fell overboard, one at a time. By the time the convoy reached Perth Amboy, 7,000 “pigs” were gone.

Most of this precious load was recovered in the days immediately following the expensive mishap, but the rest is still down there, somewhere. Now, Hayes feels he is tantalizingly close to fi nding what dozens of prospectors since could not.

“I’M A SCIENTIST, NOT A TREASURE HUNTER,” says Hayes. “Treasure hunting is just an interesting application of the technology we utilize in the other things.”

But it’s fi nding lost treasure that puts the gleam in Hayes’ eyes, and he’s no stranger to the pursuit. Over the past few years, Aqua Survey has been subcontracted on several salvages, including that of Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a Spanish ship that wrecked off the Florida Keys in 1622. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold have been recovered from the

REMAINS OF THE BAY // Rotting piles jut out of the water, while beyond, the Outerbridge Crossing spans Arthur Kill.

site, and while Aqua Survey has earned just a fraction of that, its success leaves the team in high demand. But the Arthur Kill project is Hayes’ baby.

“I think we’re pretty close,” he says with a smile. “We have the technology.”

Suddenly, a crewman announces over the radio that there might be a problem with the sled. “I said that we have the technology,” Hayes says, turning back to me with a grin. “I didn’t say it’s been perfected.”

In fact, the entire morning on the Arthur Kill has been less than perfect. First of all, a competing prospector has arrived and is watching Hayes’ crew from afar. Hayes isn’t too concerned (“They’re pretty fl y-by-night”). More irritating are threats from local crabbers, who’ve tailed the Aqua Survey team from their dock in Jersey City. They demanded money—what Hayes called “rent”—for the right even to be in this part of the Kill, and when Hayes refused, they dropped crab pots in the expedition’s path. This morning, the crabbers were asking for $300, Hayes says. Apparently, with the approach of noon, the price has gone up to $800.

METAL DETECTIVES // A crewman on the foredeck of the Robert E. Hayes maneuvers the sled aboard for a quick repair.

“They’ve got to be kidding,” Hayes chuckles as a team member relays the revised price. “What’s stopping them from telling their buddies at the bar tonight? How much will they want tomorrow? Tell ’em no deal!”

On the boat’s starboard side, shaded by the wheelhouse, Hayes produces a laminated photocopy of a New York Times article from October 17, 1903, which details the barge accident and recovery. It’s eff ectively a treasure map in article form, Hayes contends, replete with apparent red herrings that he believes could yield important clues. Since fi rst hearing about the silver in the mid-’80s, Hayes has studied the piece like the Rosetta Stone, identifying words whose meanings have altered and dissecting logic gaps and inconsistencies in police reports. He’s plied local people for old rumors about the incident and tried to separate myth from historical fact. Tales abound of a local Native American man who resided in a nursing home with just one possession: an ingot of Guggenheim silver. Hayes never found him, but he did travel to the Mexican works where the bars were fi rst cast. “I wanted to see examples of what we’re looking for.”

MYSTERY SHIP // When its three 80-foot-long legs are lowered, the Hayes transforms into a work platform.

While we’ve been chatting on the Hayes, the Delaware has been towing the sled back and forth across the channel in a sweeping pattern, like a lawn mower. Technicians are now convinced the sled has sustained some structural damage.

“There’s some junk down there,” says a machinist as a derrick begins lifting the sled to the surface. “There’s old trucks, refrigerators—who knows what else. It’s bound to get snagged every now and then.”

“Some junk” doesn’t come close to describing the amount of rotting, rusting detritus clogging the banks of the waterway. Arthur Kill is a veritable graveyard of abandoned machinery that manages to look eerie and haunted even in the blazing summer sunshine. Derelict, oxidized tugboats beached in the shallows have slumped in on themselves; superstructures on half-submerged hulls poke through the murky surface like the ribs of some gargantuan sea monster. Meanwhile, enormous modern supertankers glide quietly by, laden with oil. Despite appearances, this is a body of water that’s actually seen some ecological improvement. Hayes points out that the silversides swimming near the surface have only recently returned to the

area, a sure sign, he says, that the ecosystem is slowly headed back to health.

“See how some crabbers have set their pots mostly on the Jersey side of the channel?” asks Ken. “That’s because New Jersey has higher standards when it comes to water pollution. Our ‘friends’ are over on the New York side. Diff erent rules. And what they catch might be eaten in a fancy Manhattan restaurant tonight.”

Within a few minutes, the sled is hauled onto the deck and the bottom sludge hosed off . It looks homemade, because it is: plastic drainpipes held together with epoxy form the sled frame, corrugated plastic sheeting is affi xed to the underside of the drainpipe frame with plastic zipties. On the topside of the sled sits the heralded technology: two red rectangular boxes that can “see” deep into sediment that has hidden the booty for over a century.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” says Hayes, hands on the guardrail as he peers into the murk. “This silver is mined and made into bars in Mexico, shipped to Galveston, shipped to Manhattan —that’s thousands of miles over open ocean, mind you—then just a mile or two shy of the refi ning plant it slides into a shallow brackish channel. Incredible!”

Sure enough, the sled has collided with an obstacle, ripping some of the plastic sheeting from the frame. Extra holes are quickly drilled, more plastic gizmos affi xed (for obvious reasons, Hayes doesn’t discuss technical details), and within minutes the sled is sent back down to the bottom.

UNDER COVER OF THE NIGHT

A step-by-step account of how $26 million in silver bars went missing.

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Late at night on September 26, 1903, the Harold, a barge laden with 7,000 bars of silver bullion, leaves Manhattan. One of 14 barges pulled by a tug boat, the Harold is en route to a smelting plant in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. At a speed of just a couple knots, the convoy makes its way around the tip of Manhattan, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, into Arthur Kill. The Harold is improperly tied by a reportedly drunken crew, and it begins to list to starboard. Starting around 2 a.m., just a few miles short of the smelting plant in the mouth of the Kill, the Harold rolls and spills all but 200 of the “pigs,” most likely in small batches along the riverbed.

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Awakened by the splashes, Captain Peter Moore nevertheless fails to notice the Harold listing in the rear of the convoy. Upon arriving at the works, stevedores discover the missing bars, and when Moore is questioned, he can offer only a rough position, based on the moon. The load, now worth $26 million, is still down there.

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SILVER LINING // The $26 million trove is hidden just miles from Manhattan’s Financial District.

Should he fi nd the silver, Hayes’ next step is to get a sample in front of a judge in Manhattan, who will decide who gets to keep the money and how much.

“In any other state but New York you’d present any artifact you’d salvaged from the area to a judge,” he says. “It could be anything, a screwdriver, a pipe, whatever—and you’d get salvage rights to that area.” In New York, Hayes has to show up with an actual bar of silver.

“And who knows how many more people will come out here looking for it?”

Whether it’s Hayes who’s the fi rst to stand in a courtroom clutching a 75-pound bar of silver or the shady competitor buzzing nearby on the Kill, he remains philosophical at the prospect of being bested.

“To be honest,” he says, “I think I’d feel some sense of relief. I’d be able to let it go. Look, I’d rather someone, anyone, found it than have it sit down there forever.”

A frequent contributor to Men’s Health and New York, GRANT STODDARD hopes to buy stock in Aqua Survey, Inc.

One of the largest, most mysterious cities in the world has emerged

Three Perfect Days Shanghai from a long slumber to become a major player on the global scene. BY LAURIE WERNER

84 DAY ONE Exploring the exquisite Bund district

89 DAY TWO Getting a massage at Dongtai Lu

90 DAY THREE Chowing down at Yang’s Fry-Dumpling

SHANGHAI SIGHTS Clockwise from right, the Bund at night, a colorful local, a colonial clock tower, and Mao notebooks at the Dongtai Lu antiques market

SHANGHAI. JUST THE WORD CONJURES IMAGES OF DECADENCE AND GLAMOUR: the Opium Wars, gambling dens, Jazz Age expats and spies from all corners trading secrets as champagne fl owed. This portrait of Shanghai took hold in the popular imagination in the ’20s and ’30s as the city, then one of the most cosmopolitan in the world, gained an international reputation as the exotic Eastern hub of trade, fi nance, fashion and intrigue. Then World War II broke out, and the party stopped; the Communists took over in 1949 and all but shut down outside commerce in Shanghai for decades. These days, the largest city in China—and with some 19 million residents, one of the largest in the world—is once again the most vibrant. Its coming-out party is next summer’s World Expo, an extravaganza expected to make Shanghai a focus of world attention for six months. What sights will greet visitors? Vertigo-inducing, blinking skyscrapers, teeming bars and top-shelf restaurants, a thriving art scene and shop-houses fi lled with haute designers. Not to worry: Though Shanghai is reborn, it still seems like old times.

DAY ONE You wake up in Puxi, Shanghai’s swank central district, throw open the shades and take in what may be the best view in the city, from the Hyatt on the Bund (1), a modern, airy hotel overlooking the stately former European bank buildings that make up the small, well-touristed neighborhood called the Bund (an Urdu word imported by British traders). To the left you see the arc of the busy Huangpu River, and to the right the bizarro towers of the fi nancial district known as Pudong (Puxi denizens refer to this workmanlike burg as “Pu Jersey”). In the hotel lobby, you’re struck by the sheer breadth and depth of the grand breakfast buff et, a furious amalgam of pancakes, stir-fried Shanghai noodles and dumplings that seems to extend forever. You quickly decide not to linger and instead grab a fresh, fl aky pastry and bracing coff ee and meet up with Spencer Dodington, director of Luxury Concierge China, who gives you a brief overview of the city and an introductory walk. It’s hard to overstate the colonial opulence on display in the Bund. The buildings are referred to by number, and their architecture refl ects the piles of money made by traders in the ’20s. You marvel at the gilded columns, intricate marble fl oors and gold-lined skylight in No. 24 (2), once a Japanese bank but now the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. No. 12 (3) was built in 1923 with the intention of dominating the neighborhood. Mission

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GARY YU RESTAURATEUR // “There’s a great hidden Spanish restaurant called el Willy. It’s quite new, and everyone loves it already. One little thing not many people know is there’s a Japanese restaurant above it, run by the same owner. It’s very tiny, only 14 seats. I love both places because they’re a mash-up, just like new Shanghai.” accomplished: The result is so stunning that Communist Party elders grabbed No. 12 as their prized local headquarters in 1955.

Elsewhere on the Bund, the swank new Chinese style is on display. No. 18 (4), home to Zegna and Cartier, has enormous, glowing red Murano chandeliers. Once inside, browse the shelves of the clothes shop Younik, which stocks all the best current Chinese designers. The dramatic cuts and lush fabrics will make you question China’s

reputation as the land of cheap knockoff s.

Now you’re wondering, What other myths do I need to investigate? Head south to the Old City in search of Shanghai’s most delicious creation, the soup dumpling. You fi nd the dim sum emporium, Din Tai Fung (5), and order the pork and crab dumpling. It isn’t the tidiest of meals, but they’re worth the mess. (Tip for beginners: Cradle the dumpling in the ceramic spoon and make a small incision with your teeth; as broth then burbles into the spoon, slurp it slowly before gobbling the rest.) The dumpling, you realize, is anything but a knockoff .

Walk to Yu Garden (6), a 400-year-old oasis of pebbly ponds, wisteria and ginkgo trees, jade rock formations and dozens of peaceful pavilions—some quite whimsically named, like the “Pavilion for Viewing Frolicking Fish” (yes, they frolic). Then dash through the knickknack bazaar to the newly restored 15th century Chenghuang Miao, Temple of the City God, which protects the spirits of the departed citizens of Shanghai. Light a stick of incense, and on the way out watch a medicinal healer tap a hopeful customer’s head with a bundle of herbs—an ancient remedy. You briefl y consider a dose, but it’s only day one, and things are going well. So far.

Dinnertime comes at you fast. Luckily, the hotel concierge already made reservations for you at Shintori Null 2 (7), a minimalist hipster mecca serving expert sushi in a neighborhood du jour known as the French Concession. Pass through a narrow grove of bamboo trees and enter the former factory space. The ceilings are high enough to hush the crowds, and the sashimi and tempura are fresh, simple and light, a perfect counterpoint to the soup dumplings. Afterward, drop into the JZ Club (8) nearby, where a swing band is fi ring up. The club is dark, crowded and smoky, a paean to the Prohibition era. After a couple of drinks, you’re transported back to a roaring world

CONCESSION STANDS For designer shoes, cafés and Maoist kitsch, head to the leafy French Concession.

RAISE THE RED (AND YELLOW ) LANTERNS A well-lit alleyway near Yu Garden; a taste of the nightlife; and a taxi home

you thought disappeared with Louise Brooks. But it’s late, so you step outside, back to 2009, and hail a cab home.

2DAY TWO Forgo a taxi (though they’re inexpensive—the longest ride on this itinerary costs no more than four dollars) in favor of a brisk walk to People’s Square (1), a bustling mall packed with—what else?—people, and grab croissants and coff ee at any one of the dozens of dim sum stalls. Then stroll Nanjing Lu and check out the shops, which refl ect a fi ne balance of cutting-edge fashion and the highly negotiable prices of Old Shanghai. You’ve discovered the sweet spot between the fashionable present and the cut-rate past. Take advantage without guilt.

Cross the square to the Shanghai Museum (2), which resembles a large cooking pot, complete with jug handles, and houses 120,000 objects of fi ne art, including collections of ceramics, weapons and sculptures dating back to the Neolithic Era. You’ll also see the calligraphy paintings of misty mountains often found in dentists’ offi ces. Except, you know, these are the real thing. Double back to the French Concession and walk until you encounter the seductively named street Calm Heaven. Here, you’ll fi nd the bustling restaurant Jesse (3). Boisterous waiters are anything but calm as they weave magically through the warren of crowded dining rooms bearing steaming plates of boiled red hairy crabs, roasted fatty pork and carafes of local wine. Opt for the house special, a soothingly tender salt-cured chicken. Now it’s time for Shanghai’s worldrenowned foot massage. There is an abundance of stylish day spas that will competently pet those barking dogs, but the adventurous tourist should take what locals insist is the truly authentic route: Find a salon in which the masseurs are blind. Skeptically, you make your way to Lulu’s (4), where the sightless experts use intuition to isolate (sometimes with uncomfortable vigor) whatever ails you. Trust them: The after-eff ects are eye-opening.

KATE LORENZ REALTOR // “I like to hit the boutiques on Huaihai Road. My favorite are two French Colonial villas in a small garden behind the street that now contain Vacheron Constantin and Dunhill stores. And I always like to go to Lu Xun Park to watch the opera singers, particularly in spring when the cherry blossoms bloom.”

SCRAPING BY // Shanghai’s otherworldly skyline comes at a price // By late 2010, there will be a projected 5,000 skyscrapers within Shanghai’s city limits. The buildings elicit a range of opinions. Some gape at the otherworldly shapes and technicolor lights. The most eye-catching edifi ce is the 1,535-foot Oriental Pearl TV Tower, shaped like a rocket ship that’s skewered giant bowling balls. The tallest building in the city is the high-tech Shanghai World Financial Center, a 101-fl oor goliath with a rectangle cut from the top that makes it look like a bottle opener.

Others aren’t as thrilled. Miles of historic 19th century homes known as shikumen— rowhouses adorned with stone gates and lush courtyards—were torn down in the 1990s to make way for new projects. To visit the last remaining shikumen, wander the streets of the French Concession. But hurry: Development continues next door on the Shanghai Tower. When it opens in 2014, it’ll be the world’s secondtallest building.

ROCK STEADY Ancient stone sculptures at the Shanghai Museum, left, and a 16th century writing desk on display at the Shikumen Open House

WE MEAN YOU NO

HARM // From Barbie to Bambi, American culture lands in Shanghai // This is a city rich with cultural tradition, but not so rich that it doesn’t enjoy importing some from the West. Take the world’s only Barbie store, a 35,000-squarefoot behemoth, which opened last March stocked with thousands upon thousands of Barbie- and human-size products. The six-fl oor playhouse comprises a spa, a chocolate shop and a pink escalator enclosed in a pink tunnel with glowing pink neon lights and speakers blasting a continuous soundtrack of giggling girls. If that sounds like overload, it would be wise to wait for the arrival of the ultimate symbol of Western culture—Disneyland, whose carnival of roller coasters, funnel cakes and adults dressed up as cartoon characters opens in 2014.

Let your happy feet carry you to the Dongtai Lu antiques market (5), a long stretch of stalls whose chatterbox proprietors are experts at the hard sell. The products range from high-end antiques to Communist kitsch (such as a scale ceramic Chairman and Mrs. Mao relaxing in ceramic armchairs). Don’t be afraid to haggle, and don’t let the shouting of the hawkers throw you off —they’re here to argue. All that spirited commerce gins up an appetite, so you head to Fu 1039 (6), a bistro in a converted 1930s-style clapboard house that’s tucked away in an alley in the French Concession. The food is a mix of classic and nouveau Shanghainese and comes in onerously large portions. You can skip the soup dumplings and go straight to the crispy local smoked herring and drunken chicken poached in shaoxing wine.

Just be sure to keep in mind as the waiter off ers you another glass of the deceptively smooth shaoxing: It’s the chicken that’s supposed to be drunken, not you. Off to bed.

3DAY THREE Occupying the top fl oors of the Shanghai World Financial Center, The Park Hyatt in Pudong is the highest hotel in the world. So you opt to start the day there, for a little perspective on Shanghai’s architectural madness. You sip coff ee at the infi nity pool on the 85th fl oor and prepare for a walk down Taikang Road Art Street (1). Don’t let the wet laundry hanging from bamboo rods and stray dogs throw you off : This neighborhood is home to a thriving art scene in the process of going global.

The warren of trendy galleries and boho cafes is nearly hidden, but you seek out the alley numbered 210, where collectors and gallerists gather. Here you’ll fi nd Deke Erh Art Center, run by renowned local author and photographer Deke Erh. His collection runs from sublime Tibetan-themed oil paintings to still-wet watercolors by local art idols. The galleries wind around the alleys of Taikang and eventually overwhelm you.

You take a seat and get your bearings at a new arrival called Shanghai Cupcake (2), a sugar-dappled bakery and cafe

HENRIETTA HO

MARKETING EXECUTIVE // “I love TMSK, a bar that’s the vision of Loretta Hui-Shan Yang, a former Taiwanese actress who has trendy boutique glassware shops in town. But the bar at TMSK is made almost entirely out of colored glass, and there’s a pool fi lled with fl oating fl owers.”

6

Neihuan Elevated Rd.

8

3

Beijing West Rd. 3

7

4

2 2 1

4 5 1

Fuzhou Rd. 1 2 4 3 5

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5

Fuxing East Rd.

Nanpu Bridge

Neihuan Elevated Rd.

CHINA

• Shanghai

0 1 mile

THOSE 3 PERFECT DAYS

DAY ONE (1) Hyatt on the Bund 199 Huang Pu Rd.; Tel: 21-6393-1234 (2) No. 24 24 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu (3) No. 12 12 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu (4) No. 18 18 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu (5) Din Tai Fung Shop 11A, Building 6, Xintiandi South Block; Tel: 21-6385-8378 (6) Yu Garden 132 An Ren Rd. (7) Shintori Null 2 803 Julu Lu; Tel: 21-5404-5252 (8) JZ Club 46 West Fuxing Rd.; Tel: 21-6431-0269 DAY TWO (1) People’s Square Renmin Ave. near South Xizang Rd. (2) Shanghai Museum 201 Renmin Ave.; 21-6372-5300 (3) Jesse 41 Tianping Rd.; Tel: 21-6282-9260 (4) Lulu’s 597 Fuxing Zhong Rd.; Tel: 21-6473-2634 (5) Dongtai Lu antiques market Dongtai Rd. at Xizang Rd. (6) Fu 1039 Lane 1039 Yu Yuan Rd.; Tel: 21-5237-1878 DAY THREE (1) Taikang Road Art Street Taikang Rd. at Tianzi Fang (2) Shanghai Cupcake Lane 210 Taikang Rd.; Tel: 21-6474-1279 (3) Yang’s Fry-Dumpling 54-60 Wujiang Rd. (4) Fuxing Park Luwan (5) M on the Bund 5 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, 7th Floor; Tel: 21-6350-9988

BOARDING PASS Visit the most populous city in the most populous country with the U.S. airline with the most service to China. United links Shanghai daily with Chicago and San Francisco, with convenient connections to and from dozens of cities beyond.

WHAT A DUMPLING! The city’s signature soup dumpling; crowded Nanjing Lu; strolling in hip Puxi; dining at M on the Bund; and a sample of M’s delectable crispy suckling pig that serves the best cupcakes in town—and perhaps all of China. Have a tea, but save the cupcake for later. Lunch comes fi rst.

Yang’s Fry-Dumpling (3), on nearby Wujiang Lu, is a simple but sensational dumpling joint. If you arrive during the lunch rush (between noon and two), prepare for a worthwhile wait. The perfectly fried dumplings are fi lled with intensely fl avorful pork doused with a tincture of vinegar and sprinkled with sesame seeds. There are rumors that Yang’s may fall victim to development, but hopefully they’re just rumors. This is a true Shanghai gem.

Afterward, you eat the cupcake on the way to the wildly popular Fuxing Park (4), modeled after a Parisian city park, with wide promenades, banks of plane trees and manicured fl ower beds. This afternoon, bridal couples pose for their offi cial photos, women sing opera accompanied by fl utes, tai chi practitioners slowly practice their moves, and couples dance to waltzes on tape. In the corner, in a surprisingly rare public nod to Communism, severe statues of Marx and Engels survey the action.

For your last night, return to the Bund and have an exquisite Chinese-French dinner at M on the Bund (5), the swank restaurant that announced Shanghai’s entrance to the global dining scene 10 years ago. The artichokes and crispy suckling pig make a strong case for continued Franco-Chino relations. Afterward, you amble to the silvery Glamour Bar next door to mingle with the international crowd. They toast one another and their good fortune. As the money and champagne fl ow, it seems like old times.

A contributing editor at Forbes Life, LAURIE WERNER has tried unsuccessfully to replicate Yang’s Fry-Dumpling’s pork and crab recipe.

GEORGE MICHELL

ART GALLERY OWNER // “A lot of people don’t know about the city’s jazz heritage, but it was really popular here in the ’20s. It stopped during the Cultural Revolution but came up again in the ’90s. Now I like to go to the Cotton Club and the JZ Club, which are restarting the tradition.”

MARKETPLACE

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