The old lawless city
peopled by ruthless entrepreneurs,
crowds of coolies, gangs of bandits
so lovingly evoked in Western novels
has been shanghaied and tucked away
in a remote tiny corner
that the guide gives us five minutes to look at.
The new mega Shanghai
with the biggest airport, railway and
underground system still in the making
but lovingly displayed -
with plastic trees and plastic water -
on four ultra-modern storeys
and marvelled at by middle-class representatives
of its twenty million people
is turned into flesh at the speed
of its reckless drivers
for whom red is no answer.
My love for this lost literature is irrelevant here,
their obsession with urban superlatives
nauseating for an old country boy like me
but if the triumphal march of the Asian Century
will run as smoothly as their maglev train,
which cuts a swathe through their six hundred skyscrapers,
or will hit the world like one of those nasty tornados
remains to be seen - for the capitalistic future
is an evasive demon, despite this grand museum.