I'm Shanghainese

I'm Shanghainese.

And that is how the Shanghai girls introduce themselves. Just like that. If you meet any other person from any other place they are likely to say to you 'I am from Anhui' or 'I am from a small town, maybe you never heard of it, it is in Shandong'. They don't use their place of birth as an adjective, it remains a pronoun. The sentence they use to describe where they were born comes like this subject/verb/object, so that they themselves and the town or city where they were born are separated, not joined together. Not a description of the other or of oneself, but not in Shanghai, because the Shanghai girls say:

I'm Shanghainese.

And it's the way they say it too. A defined sense of saying it. A stylised way of declaring who they are, what they are. It's a hallmark in sound so universally known in this town that it could be up there with 'The name's Bond; James Bond'. And just like Sean Connery, as he utters these famous words, wearing his signature theme tune tuxedo, the Shanghai girl says it with the same coolness while wearing her signature 5-inch heels,

I'm Shanghainese.

And break each part down, so that each syllable can be analysed. Look at the way Nabakov did it and copy that (this is land of the eternal fake after all) – 'Lo Lee Ta'. The Shanghai girl says each part in a well practised form. She very cleverly allows us to know which part of the word we should pay attention to, the part that separates her from all her mainland cousins.

I'm Shanghainese.

And it's this very part of the word – it means 'above' in Chinese – that we should be aware of. For she is above the girl from Anhui, above the girl from Shandong, she is above every other person in the room and she is above you. Why? Because...

I'm Shanghainese.

And when she says it she doesn't look at anyone. No need. She looks down at something in her lap, not out of a feeling of slight awkwardness or shyness, not because she feels uncomfortable at being asked where she is from, but because she feels that eye-contact is really not necessary. It's like saying if you're interested, then be interested, if not, so be it, because the actual 'Shanghaineseness' of being female and from Shanghai is enough. No need for the admiration of others. It's merely enough to say...

I'm Shanghainese.

So what is it about them that commands so much respect whether deserved or not? What is that causes so many words to be said about them, favourable or not? Girls from the provinces both worship and despise the Shanghai girl. They want to be like her but not be her. 'Shanghai girl too open', the countryside girls say inbetween tutting at her dress sense or her addiction to smoking or the tattoo displayed for all to see on her perfectly carved shoulder.

The Shanghai girl doesn't care about the countryside girl and what she thinks or doesn't think. Let the countryside girl spend her free time from her mundane job thinking about the Shanghai girl while the Shanghai girl spends her free time and others money in the hallways of Grand Gateway. The Shanghai girl has more important things to think of in the form of Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton.

Her coolness knows no limit, there is no thermostat control for her iciness. She is the Ice Queen and she has the breath of a polar bear. She lives in the North Pole and she drinks water from the glacier springs. She is cold. That is not to say that she is unsmiling, because she does possess the ability to smile, but her eyes will radiate light beams in a cold icy glare that, like Medusa, will turn a man to stone. Why? Because she says:

I'm Shanghainese.

She is perfect and perfection looks at the Shanghai girl and takes a bow. In the court of Shanghai's Shanzai Royal Family (manufactured in Wenzhou) she is the Ice Queen. All hail the queen. She walks in and everyone stand up.

She can command this kind of respect and this kind of attention by the sheer belief in every atom in her body that she really is 'all that' and much, much more, because when you gaze upon her and try to imagine about her life, you may be fooled into believing that she lives in a high rise apartment that sells for 35,000 rmb per square meter within the inner ring road, perhaps in Xujiahui or just off Nanjing Road or maybe JingAn. You might think that she purrs around town in a BMW donated by some kind admirer as she glides in and out of Shanghai's must-be-seen-in shopping malls. That the clothes she wears are so limited edition that she owns both.

But you could also be wrong. Shanghai is all flim and flam. Everything you see is a charade, a facade, a slip of the hand.

This Shanghai Princess lives in Minhang. Or maybe Changning. She lives in a six-storey walk-up, one of those old buildings that Shanghai property developers seem to devour like hot-buttered croissants in an attempt to make Shanghai look more like Shanghai. She travels around town by bus, crushed inside with all the masses, like jiaozi. She uses the subway on her Saturday trips to Shanxi Nan Lu and stares forlornly at the jeans that her salary just won't stretch to this month. She does a job she despises and hates her boss for looking at her too long or offering her a 'bonus' for some services required on a business trip to some hellhole inland. She lives with her mum and dad and gets lectured every evening about the fact that she should be married and every Spring Festival is a painful reminder of other cousins married bliss. She goes to her room and watches American tv series on youku.com on her laptop rested on her knees while sitting on her bed.

'I'm Shanghainese', she thinks to herself.