The door to the Monkey Lounge is unmarked, tucked down an alley, and identifiable only by its simian knocker. Shanghai may be a rich and roaring city, but its beau monde want to party discreetly, and this place is very discreet indeed. To get in, you need the closely guarded door code, and to get that you must make a reservation, by calling the unpublished phone number.

The entrance may be low key, but the interior is anything but. The old colonial villa contains a preposterous confection of gilded Corinthian columns, swagged velvet curtains, modern marble-topped tables and monkey imagery that ranges from little chimp-shaped lamps along the bar to intriguing portraits: Ingres's Napoleon, modified with a monkey's head in place of the emperor's, hangs opposite a familiar likeness of a Manchu emperor with the face of an ape.

It's an artistic trope that seems to be popular in Shanghai just now. Earlier that day, at the Shanghai Gallery of Art at Three on the Bund, I'd lingered in an exhibition of works by Qiu Jie, a former propaganda artist who places a tabby cat's head on the odd human form in his intricate, exquisitely executed pop-political drawings. And later, at the ShanghART gallery on Huaihai Lu, I'd happened on a show by Zhou Tiehai, who superimposes the head of Camel cigarettes' Joe Camel cartoon character on to human figures in copies of Titians, Canalettos and Manets.