SHANGHAI

As I entered its north gate, my eye was caught by a sign in Mandarin and English, entitled Public Parks’ Rules for Visitors, which in light of the festive atmosphere made salutary reading. “The visitor to the park should discipline himself instead of making a nuisance,” it cautioned. “Activities of a feudalistic or superstitious nature are banned.” (This in a city where some bars have a resident fortune-teller.) And, politely but firmly, “Visitors are expected not to urinate or shit.”

Such injunctions seemed at odds with the dynamically modern scene before me: the range of skyscrapers soaring above the stands of bamboo, the crowds of elegant Shanghainese. But nothing struck quite so unexpected a note as what was playing on the big screen opposite the Grand Theatre. Here were western ballet dancers, girls in tutus, boys in tights, members of Munich’s Bayerisches Staatsballett it turned out, dancing divertissements from Petipa’s rarely performed Raymonda. It was a preview by the company that would soon be performing here, as would the West Australian Ballet, Cairo Opera Ballet, St Petersburg State Academic Ballet, Guangzhou Acrobatic Ballet Troupe (performing Swan Lake – see those cygnets soar!) and the Shanghai Ballet itself.

Shanghai is a city mad for dancing. Soon after dawn in its misty parks and on the Bund esplanade, there are people practising tai chi. Come evening, however, they abandon this graceful meditative martial art for ballroom. As night falls in bosky Fuxing Park, couples foxtrot, quickstep and waltz. In Jingan Park, a couple of kilometres west of the centre, a chorus line of mostly women no longer in their first youth are putting the finishing touche"