I remember my first impressions of Shanghai. At was a freezing cold early evening in late January 2007. My older brother, Chris, met me at Hongqiao Airport. I had spent a miserable week in Beijing before coming to Shanghai. Before that, I had lived in Cape Town, South Africa for a year studying journalism and literature at University of Cape Town.

My brother had been living in Shanghai for over a year and invited me to come to China and crash on his couch while I decided if wanted to stay.

I never chose China, really. I never wanted to come here and never expected to like it.

Whenever you leave a country or even a city for good after being there for a while, you know you are closing a chapter of a book forever. You can't go back and it's over whether you like it or not. And if those moments were very special, it can be hard to move on. So trying to adjust from life in warm and sunny Cape Town to the worst month of a Shanghai winter was not ideal. I was very low in spirits. Beaten really. Full of toxic negativity.

My brother loaded my bags in the back of a taxi and we sped off into the night. It wasn't pitch dark yet, but I stared out the windows as the skyscrapers loomed above. I craned my neck to see to their tops. Everything seemed fierce, harsh, cold, sinister, natureless, unwelcoming, unfriendly and unabashed. It was a landscape of towering, modern menacing buildings, lit with all manner of flashing lights and cut in odd shapes.

Shanghai: Paris of the East. Whore of the Orient. Sin City. A "hypercity". Population estimated at 20 million. The largest city in the world's most populated country. A transitive verb.

To shanghai:

transitive. verb. shang·haied, shang·hai·ing,

2. To induce or compel (someone) to do something, especially by fraud or force.