The ride down Nanjing Road took him through the heart of Shanghai's 
shopping district, now an endless gauntlet of tanned beggars squatting on their 
heels gripping the brightly colored plastic bags that served as their 
suitcases, carefully passing the butts of cigarettes back and forth. In
the shop windows above their heads, animated mannikins strutted and posed in 
the latest Coastal Republic styles. Hackworth noticed that these were much more 
conservative than they had been ten years ago, during his last trip down 
Nanjing Road. The female mannikins weren't wearing slit skirts anymore. Many 
weren't wearing skirts at all, but silk pants instead, or long robes that were 
even less revealing. One display was centered upon a patriarchal figure who 
reclined on a dais, wearing a round cap with a blue button on the top: a 
mandarin. A young scholar was bowing to him. Around the dais, four groups of 
mannikins were demonstrating the other four filial relationships.