There’s always a New Jerusalem isn’t there? Once it was London, then came New York’s turn. Remember the film ‘Working Girl’? Well, now the New Jerusalem must be Shanghai.

Founded on prostitution, the drug trade and no holds barred trading tussles between rival colonial powers, this megalopolis strutting up from the mudflats of the Yangzi River delta is capturing capitalists like ants to honey. It sucks them in.

It sucks in a hell of a lot of travellers too, me among them.

I was seduced at first, like so many others who came before me.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to M on the Bund, the Australian operated de luxe eating and drinking joint on the famous Bund. Clambering out of a taxi I was accosted, a polite word in this instance, assaulted is more apt, by a grandmotherly woman who insisted on polishing my brand new black leather dress shoes. I tried to cajole her, saying no politely. I tried the nervous gwailo brush-off too.

‘No thank you. No thank you.’

Repeatedly she plops herself at my feet, blocking my path, plucking at my trousers, ‘I clean’ ‘I clean’. It's a sort of chant.

My drinking buddies are ploughing their way up the Bund to M entrance and I’m fighting off an old lady who wants to polish my shoes. Finally she squirts some sticky white cream on my left shoe and points at it. It looks like bird shit.

‘Ok’ I say. She rubs and rubs for a minute and then demands the equivalent of $20. I'm so shocked at her outrageous demand that I momentarily waver. My shoes look no different than before. Only the bird shit is missing.

Grandma is obviously a real Shanghai lady, a mover and shaker in the fleecing and flattering business that fuels this town full of newly minted capitalist roaders.

Shocked I hand her about $5. She shrieks abuse at me and I run off to M on the Bund to drink its $20 cocktails in a hot and noisy atmosphere.

Later I ponder shoe shiner’s motives.

No doubt she has migrated clandestinely from the countryside. She doesn’t have a permit to live in Shanghai. She’s a survivor, a hustler in a city full of them.

Witness Pudong’s rising towers of industry glowering over the megalopolis. They represent shocking growth. It’s the fastest growing city on the planet and it looks it. Its new airport dwarfs most cities, so huge it must surely be visible from space, like the Great Wall is. The energy devouring mag-lev train flashes travellers into the city within minutes. The line extension into the CBD is scheduled for completion in time for Shanghai’s Expo 2010, allowing the train to reach its full potential, flinging passengers from the airport into town at nearly 450 kilometres per hour. This occurs within city limits. Blink your eyes and miss the trip. Could anywhere else in the world ram through such a high speed conveyance among its tax avoiding inhabitants and get away with it? I think not. But in Shanghai it’s the done thing.

Prostitutes work the streets. Prostitution is officially illegal in China.

Shiny boutiques charge Belgravia prices for frippery and silk shoes.

Drugs deals are done in dimly lit side streets. Drug use is officially illegal in China.

Most Chinese citizens get by on less than $2,000 per annum.

I buy pirated DVDs from a small store off the infamous Nanking Road. I don’t expect them to be of viewable quality so I take a photo of ‘DVD man’ and warn him that if his DVDs don’t work that I will publish him on the internet.

But they do work. At about a dollar each I’m happy to tolerate the dodgy sound.

Welcome to the New Jerusalem. Same as it always was.