In China

George Bernard Shaw's time in Stalinist Russia is well known - the great writer was famously taken in by Uncle Joe's charm and staunchly defended him in the Western press. But I was surprised when a friendly local in Shanghai told me that Shaw had been here also. A trip to the Peace Hotel, where he stayed, jumped to the top of my itinerary.

Despite our 70+ million diaspora, I wasn't expecting to find much Irish influence in Shanghai beyond those generic Irish bars to be found everywhere. So I was excited to follow the path of a Dubliner that gave the World something beyond drinking. Shaw is the only person to win both a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Academy Award for film. In Dublin, you can't throw a stone without hitting some relic or another from the city of Joyce and Yeats; it was surreal to find myself tracing my city's literary heritage in Shanghai.

I found the Peace Hotel on the Bund. China has lost huge swathes of its architectural heritage to war, the cultural revolution and the pace of its current property boom, but in Shanghai the architectural diversity is still respected. And nowhere moreso than on the Bund. On one side of the river, an unspoiled series of splendid art-deco buildings from Shanghai's colonial past. Facing them, the dizzying ambition of the Pudong skyline.

The Peace Hotel itself is perhaps the finest art-deco building on the bund. Though only recently renovated, it is a magnificent throwback to the glamorous hedonism of 1930s Shanghai. It feels more Jazz-Age New York than modern China. I amble around the grandiose lobby, tea rooms, and jazz bar, before reading the display on the hotel's history and famous guests. Funnily enough, Shaw doesn't make it onto the display. I do learn about the hotel's founder, Victor Sassoon, and other famous guests such as Charlie Chaplin, Noel Coward, the Clintons and Sun Yat-Sen.

I can't leave without treating myself to a refreshment, but my budget doesn't stretch to even afternoon tea in these surroundings. I settle for tea in the Peace Hotel Cafe, priced for passing tourists rather than hotel guests. I still pay more than I feel good about. However I can't quite put a price on the experience of briefly feeling at one with Shanghai's 1930s expat literati.

I came to the Peace Hotel looking for an Irishman. I found Shanghai. I found its colonial splendour and heritage, facing out onto the future across the Bund.