Welcome to the sixteenth edition of VoiceMap’s newsletter, Senses of Direction, where we share stories from around the world that spark curiosity and stimulate your senses.
This month, we travel back to Shanghai’s boom at the turn of the millennium when, as one expat put it, “nothing was allowed but everything was possible.” In New York City, we hear about the exuberant Gilded Age and how it’s having its time in the sun again, thanks to the HBO series.
Lastly, we get a taste of life in the town with the world’s most complicated border, where picking your jurisdiction is part of daily life for teenagers and taxpayers alike.
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For your sense of momentum | Shanghai in the go-go years
Shanghai in the early-2000s was a heady place. You could zip across the city for hotpot or hamburgers at 4am in a 20-yuan taxi, light up in an elevator that carried you 128 storeys high, and make your fortune almost overnight – even without decent Mandarin.
In a new interview on the China Books Podcast, Mark Kitto – owner of a multi-million dollar magazine publishing business that was seized by the government in 2004 – described the era as “mind blowing.”
“There are certain periods in history in certain places where sort of everything just happened all at once. Things just went off, not always in a good direction. I’m thinking perhaps Berlin before the Second World War, New York in the twenties, perhaps before the Depression. (…) It just went boom. Absolute boom.”
Kitto was interviewed about this new book, China Running Dog, by Alec Ash, another Brit who called China home during its heyday, landing in 2008. It’s the same year, coincidentally, that VoiceMap’s founder Iain Manley and I arrived in Shanghai on a train from Lhasa.
Ash teases Kitto for not-so-loosely basing the book’s characters on the who’s who of Shanghai’s expat community – one of whom was Kitto himself, who dressed like a “twit” in a pinstripe suit. He also pushes Kitto to explain why writing a novel enabled him to tell “the real story” in a country that’s become synonymous with censorship.
With China on a very different trajectory today, this podcast and Kitto’s book are fascinating pieces in the puzzle of what cosmopolitan Shanghai once was.
? Listen to the podcast, preview China Running Dog, and read Kitto’s controversial – and, in some ways, prophetic – article about why he left the country he called home for 16 years here. (Free subscription required.) Or, for a fresh-faced view of what it was like to live in one of the world’s fastest growing cities from 2008 to 2011, watch this documentary featuring Iain and 20-something me.
For your sense of status | The Gilded Age guide
Just a few decades before New York’s roaring twenties, the city was gripped by the dazzling optimism and ruthless ambition of another exuberant era, the Gilded Age.
Whether you’re curious to step into the drama and intrigue of 1880s New York society, or you’ve already been captivated by HBO’s TV series about the period, this track from Tom Darbyshire’s incredibly popular VoiceMap takes you to the centre of the action.
Darbyshire points out the sites of real mansions where fictitious characters from the series lived, loved and squabbled – like Bertha Russel, who’s based on Alva Vanderbilt. He also draws parallels with the modern-day clash between new and old money.
“The story of the nouveau riche seeking entry to established society still plays out today. See that apartment building on the left corner, number 800? An ambitious young real estate developer named Donald Trump moved here with his pregnant wife and two boys. Trump’s father made his fortune building middle income apartments in Queens, but Donald set his sights on Manhattan. They lived here only three years, because, like the robber barons of old, he soon built a gilded palace of his own, called Trump Tower. On Fifth Avenue, of course, at 57th Street. Where Millionaires Row crosses Billionaires Row.”
? Listen to the track here or browse through the tour, The Gilded Age Guide: Mansions of Fifth Avenue and Millionaire’s Row.
For your sense of boundaries | The World’s most complicated border
Can you imagine living in a town where you can go out for dinner in one country before popping across the border for a nightcap in another? This new one-minute video clip gives us a peek into what daily life is like for residents of Baarle, a European town that’s made up of a mosaic of Dutch and Belgian territory. It also touches on the history behind the world’s most complicated border, and a few unexpected perks.
? Watch The Most Complicated Border, or this four-minute video in which residents – including local policemen – highlight some of the practical challenges of life in this cartographer’s nightmare.
Until next time, thanks for travelling with us!
Best Wishes,
Claire
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