Chinese Whispers

You are tired, hungry. It is four in the morning in Shanghai and you’re only just now rounding the corner of the block that your pretty sure has your hostel on it. You’re even more sure than you were about the last block. You’ve been dancing. Your feet hurt. As you turn the corner, an encampment of green tents block your path.
You already know that tomorrow you just might regret taking to one of the dance stages that rise at irregular intervals from the seething mass of sweating bodies. But the dense smoke that comes with any Chinese nightclub couldn't keep you from a particularly impassioned rendition of Katy Perry’s Firework. Blue lasers cut through the smog, it was your jam and you gave them a show. Head snaps and booty rolls for all. You’re generous like that. Now your neck aches.
You are wary of the tents. So much happens in this city that you don’t understand. You think that Shanghai is the only place you know that has its own verb. To shanghai someone is to force them, through force or by fraud, into doing something they don’t want to do. That worries you sometimes, and you’re not sure why you decided to spend so much of your time in China here.
You get closer to the tents, there’s this smell and suddenly your feet don’t hurt. Katy Perry dissolves into a distant memory. Under the tents huddled young people have their heads bent low, laughing and drinking from huge bottles of Tsing Tao, the clean bright bubbles hit their lips and dribble out the sides, on to an array of fake leather pants and patterned stockings. You figure this must be where all the cool kids go after 3am.
One man just outside one of the tents bends over a miniature army of dumplings, arranged in rows. They are growing golden in the juicy run-off of their own insides. You can’t give him your money fast enough. The unfamiliar coins tumble through your fingers.
You sit there, your dress splattered with oil and you are happy. It’s the smell of the dumplings and the shameless, cheesy joy in the pop songs. It’s learning never to look the taxi drivers in the eye—the only way to avoid being hit as they careen through the city. It’s the wooden stools and the 4am life in this city. Cigarette smoke in your hair, grease on your fingers, Shanghai has something you’re only just now discovering that you love.