By making an appointment with Thomas Chabrières, a Frenchman who a few years ago launched Insiders, an agency offering tours of the city - and of China as a whole - in vintage sidecars. You arrange to meet at the foot of your hotel and take off for an hour or more in the direction of Renmin Road, a noisy street that follows the line of the old city wall. It's a complete change of scenery. You're in the midst of life as it bubbles to life, in the ground-level cooking of amazing fritters and candied chicken feet. On the stalls of an impromptu market, crabs, turtles and live toads stir alongside heaps of unfamiliar green vegetables and rows of duck eggs. When we ask why the elderly are wandering around in fluffy pyjamas at midday, we are told that in the Maoist era, pyjamas were the only personal item of clothing you were allowed to wear: some are still proud to walk the streets in handbags and housecoats. You have to rush out to see this life in the China of yesteryear. According to the forthcoming urbanisation plans, the Lilong, the narrow streets lined with traditional 19th-century houses, and the Shikumen, the ancient stone gates, all vestiges of old Shanghai, are set to disappear over the next five years.
Insiders > Phone: +86 150 211 124 51
Email : thomas@insidersexperience.com
Internet: www.insidersexpeditions.com
