Waiters in starched white shirts move amongst the crowded tables of terrace caf s where roaring gas heaters keep out the night's chill. Teenage police officers lounge sullenly at intersections, tugging at their white gloves as they watch opposing streams of vehicles inch past with blaring horns and glaring headlights. Huge signs are flooded with new advertisements every twenty seconds. Corporate logos burn sleeplessly inside glass-walled malls piled with electronics, silks, and exotic biotech. Behind the Bund and the commercial sector, the gridded streets are narrower but no less crowded.
Traffic is jammed in a complex one-way system.
Electric scooters tow trailers piled high with flat TV sets or melons or cartons of cigarettes. Bars and clubs flaunt their wares in video loops cut to the hectic beat of slash funk. Hawkers thrust animated adsheets into the hands of passers-by. Stalls sell ramen or noodle soups, spices, tacky souvenirs, bootleg spikes, cages of live birds, exotic tweaks. Here's an old woman tipping a handful of fish heads into sesame oil smoking in a blackened wok.