Shanghai is too big to fail to be enjoyed

A rainy night in Shanghai. Neon lights reflect violet-pink-yellow-red in puddles along Nanjing Road East, a pedestrian-only commercial district where 21st-century high-tech buildings bump against 1930s Art Deco wonders. Umbrellas snap open as shoppers scurry past Westernized clothing boutiques, electronic stores, high-end jewelry shops, and brightly-lighted fast food emporiums with familiar names: KFC, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Wendy's.
I am dodging raindrops with Jenny O'Connor, my niece, who traveled to meet me from her home in Guangzhou. (She moved there two years ago with her husband and their four children for his job at the State Department.) We are hungry, but I have not endured 14 1/2 hours on a plane from Chicago to eat a fast food burger with fries, so we turn down a side street and wander till we find an appropriate place to dine.
The menu, with glossy photos and English subtitles, offers all manner of duck - spicy fragrant neck, delicious duck feet, glutinous duck tongue, spicy hot duck's head - as well as stir-fried ox tongue, snake head hot pot, natural bean dregs soup, hot and spicy cooked gizzard's blood, brine pig's tail, sauteed old frog, and palatable black fungus.
Off Taikang Road we discover an artsy tangle of lanes and old brick buildings. Galleries abound as well as crafts and clothing boutiques. It is where the young come to shop, eat, see, and be seen. It is big enough to feel as if we are getting lost but not so big that we worry we are. We find a book on Art Deco Shanghai in The Old China Hand Reading Room, a bookstore, art gallery, and tearoom run by photographer Deke Ehr. In Woo, we are tempted to buy luscious pashminas, woven capes, and scarves. I almost spring for an industrial-inspired bag but decide to save my money for lunch.
We snag a cab and hand the driver a card for the spicy Hunan restaurant Guyi. We have heard it is a local favorite, always busy, no reservations, expect a line. We arrive at 3 p.m. and find it empty. No one sits beneath the crystal chandeliers at tables set with crisp white cloths, except the staff dining in the far corner. It is open? Yes. We are handed a voluminous menu with snappy color photos and order by pointing. Jenny knows the word for beer: "pi jiu."
Chicken with fresh bamboo shoots, chilies, and cilantro arrives in a cast iron wok. Purple baby eggplant and green beans with red pepper are eye-popping bright and sufficiently spicy. The only thing missing? Napkins.
"I rarely find napkins in restaurants in China," says Jenny, confessing she often slides the tablecloth across her lap.

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