How China's youth culture is reshaping Shanghai

On a bend in the Bund riverfront, baroque, pillared palaces from Shanghai’s days as a high-society hub sparkle like diamonds in a décolettage. Across the water, the sun ricochets off 21st-century skyscrapers half a kilometre tall. And between them, thousands of people swarm the boardwalk, scrum for photos and pour out of ritzy restaurants to take in the panorama that’s become a symbol of the city’s might.

The Bund is a must-see for anyone in Shanghai, but it can get manic — just like the rest of this city of nearly 25 million people. Ever since British and other European merchants first arrived to colonise the city’s harbour in the 19th century, Shanghai has been the engine that fired China’s meteoric rise — championing a go-go-go rhythm of wealth creation that revolved around shipping, then manufacturing, then tech. When Covid arrived and Shanghai imposed its long, brutal lockdown, the generation that came of age living inside and online had it rough. They emerged galvanised, ready to live a more balanced life and to find joy and meaning in leisure time.

Which is why I’ve ducked behind the Bund into the dense bamboo of Gucheng Park, to a pond where weeping willows sway over the still water. On the bank, a fragment of Shanghai’s old city wall buttresses a glass pavilion framed in rust-red steel: the One Step Garden cafe. I settle into a deep leather seat by panoramic windows and order a white-peach beer. The wi-fi is terrible; that’s the point. A beep-free environment where customers can admire the greenery is the ethos of One Step Garden.

I’ve come here to meet Helen Tian, a 22-year-old graduate from Shanghai’s Fudan University with glossy hair, vintage jeans and flawless English. She recently left a demanding internship for a place on a PhD course and she’s enjoying her freedom. Helen often plots out a long walk ending at a cafe where she can sit with a book. “The ‘walk’ part is important,” she says, and the cafe is usually One Step Garden — there are several branches occupying vintage properties around town. “On weekends, I try not to talk to anyone,” Helen says, gazing out at the bamboo. “I’ve been going on solo dates, by myself, and these places prioritise silence and plants, like a botanical garden.”

She’s treading an entirely foreign path to her parents. They came of age during Shanghai’s post-millennium boom years, when people raced to earn and save for a family. “They had less agency — they felt there was a path crafted for them and it was all they knew,” Helen says. She emerged from an education system where success was down to deals, sales and profits. “Before you pursued any hobby, you had to get the numbers right — there wasn’t much room for your personality to shine through,” she explains. After the tough time she and her peers faced during the pandemic, it was only a matter of time before they flipped the script.

Today they represent Shanghai’s ‘Me Generation’, stepping off the treadmill and pivoting offline. The Me Generation jogs to yoga with their pet shih tzus and parties until dawn dressed, as Helen shows me in iPhone photos, in contemporary versions of the traditional outfits their grandparents wore. The latter has become so popular, there’s even a term for this Neo-Chinese style: ‘guochao’.

With its imposing architecture and frenetic streets, Shanghai wasn’t built for today’s brand of me-time. But it is slowly transforming to please Helen and millions of young Shanghainese. With many dodging the pressure of a house and family, the city is their oyster.

As I explore on my first visit in a decade, it’s under clear blue skies. With factories now relocating to Southeast Asia, Shanghai’s notorious smog has dissipated. The streets are remarkably tranquil — electric cars come and go with hardly a sound. And the vibe as I walk through the centre of town seems unusually chill. In freshly marked cycle lanes, pleasure riders on Dutch bikes and racers in full spandex are overtaking the grizzled old couriers towing mountains of cargo. Food vendors who once obstructed the pavements have moved into proper stores to dole out juicy half-moon dumplings and crispy jianbing crepes.

I drop off my bag and meander through the former French Concession, an enclave of boutique-lined boulevards and residential laneways. During the boom years of the early 2000s, people worried the area’s cherished art deco architecture would be razed by developers, but the neighbourhood’s original character remains intact. Heritage manors that once sat derelict are now pristine and signs akin to blue plaques have been added to them stating each one is a ‘cultural relic’. Others sell vintage vinyl and pipe jazz into the street.

I peer into a wine bar selling biodynamic Cabernet from Ningxia region, try on silky sundresses in shops with names whose meanings have been lost in translation: Headache, Surname, Liv Tyler. Shanghai also has thousands of cafes now, many selling their own trademarked fair-trade beans. They’re inside boutiques, hair salons, even bog-standard convenience stores, and many sidestep the Western template, far outnumbering traditional Chinese teahouses. At the austere, standing-only roastery Ops, baristas mingle with the customers. “Take smell,” one says, waving a bowl of grounds from Yunnan under my nose.

“Until recently, lots of people didn’t know how to order,” a customer called Andy Huang tells me while we await our drinks. Orders like the half-cap and skinny macchiato have become a symbol of refinement and status for the financially flush youth. At cafes like Ops, queues form outside even in mid-afternoon. Valued offline spaces, they also provide a place in which to relax and reflect. “People care about leisure time now,” says Andy. “My parents spent all their spare time at home. Career was the most important thing. I feel a responsibility to show them how the world should be.”

Andy is full of recommendations. She tells me about the trend for Chinese-style bistros that reinvent authentic recipes from the provinces — a sort of culinary guochao. “The pandemic was a trigger for people to look back on their cultural history and appreciate local customs,” she explains. An example she recommends is a restaurant down the road called Cila that’s reinterpreting cuisine from Xibei (Northwest China). Later, I find it in a slender French Concession bungalow. Five raucous 25-year-olds at the next table are devouring plates of charcoal-grilled lamb chops, a Xibei staple, so I order some. They come dressed with shaved parmesan and an unusual chive sauce bringing garlic to the mix. Young sommeliers whizz past with bottles of domestic wine. I pass — I’ve already resolved in my head to track down a proper wine bar.

Five blocks away, I choose a polished-concrete sliver of a space called Mantan. The server, Mento Siu, pours me a Gansu-province Pinot and we get talking about freelance life. “I like the ‘free’ part of it,” he says. Mento left an all-hours job at Deloitte to consult part time and pour wine the rest — because, why kill yourself? “Everyone is changing jobs now, earning less but enjoying affordable luxuries,” he tells me. “We used to earn to buy a house. Now we spend on what we want.”

Everywhere I go, it feels as if that fabled China speed has shifted down a gear. The next morning, I hop on the Metro to the West Bund, a former industrial zone smartened up with a smooth, tiled boardwalk, where couples stroll for miles along the Huangpu River. Monumental new museums give it the feel of London’s Southbank, except every venue is a reworked gasholder or aircraft hangar. In a repurposed former factory called the West Bund Art Center, I tour an exhibition of sepia photos. It recounts Shanghai’s architectural evolution from humble market town to 1930s playground where European traders and their wives came for the nightlife, through the concrete Communist revolution and ensuing construction bonanza. Illustrating the current era are blueprints of warehouse conversions and rewilding schemes. This is where today’s youth take over. Having grown up in the construction dust of Shanghai’s big dreams, they’re now creatively fulfilling their own.

In the latter part of the 20th century, ‘Made in China’ was synonymous with cheap, low-quality manufacturing. But as I carry on along the river toward the fine-art showcase the Long Museum, elegantly retrofitted into a 1950s former coal hopper, the style ethos and execution of these regenerated building projects shows how much has changed.

There’s a very different style ethos on display later that evening when I head back to the Bund’s copse of skyscrapers, lit up to seizure-inducing brightness. Many are topped with drinking dens overlooking the Bund’s quaint limestone manors. I opt for the low-key Punch Room, atop The Shanghai Edition hotel, where I enjoy the view from a modernist easy chair while nursing a Shanghai Milk Punch with Chinese brandy, Angelica herb and oolong tea.

But the night is young. Acting on a tip from Mento, I hunt down a new music complex called INS that could hardly have been conceived anywhere else but Shanghai. A mini-mall of 20 bars, dance clubs and karaoke joints, it’s like an offline expression of a video game. I ride the lift up the levels to a neon-lit hip-hop club called La Fin, filled mostly with head-bopping men in chinos clasping bottles of Reeb beer, Shanghai’s finest. Further down, on the fourth level, there’s a mobbed techno club lacquered in Chinese-red and a chill-out lounge thronged with girls dressed in manga outfits.

Eventually I trip outside past a couple in regal white cashmere coats and settle on a park bench to watch the spectacle. Young people chatter behind me, sitting in groups on the park lawn. Perhaps they weren’t able to get past the bouncers; maybe they’re waiting for friends or trying to protect their ears from the persistent bass inside. Whatever the case, they seem to be enjoying the thick, warm air and the feel of the grass beneath them, in no rush to get home.