Shanghai likes to think of itself as New York to Beijing's Washington DC. Beijing is the buttoned-down, bureaucratic centre of government, so Shanghaiese tell themselves, while Shanghai is the financial, fashion and cultural hub, as well as the nation's arbiter of taste.

Foreigners arriving in China for the first time often come away with the very same view. With the gleaming skyscrapers in Pudong and its conveyor belt of new restaurants from all over the world, Shanghai has an air of easy cosmopolitanism that makes Beijing seem the provincial city.

Those first impressions can be very seductive. On the Bund, Shanghai's old colonial waterfront, there is a place called the Glamour Bar whose ceiling-high windows look on to the Pudong skyline. On two separate occasions, complete strangers on their first visit to Shanghai have approached this correspondent to ask for advice on how to get a job in the city. Something about the view made them want to change their lives.