Shanghai syndrome

Anything you can do I can do better. The relationship between Hong Kong and Shanghai is just like the words of the old song. Andrew Tuck visited these hot rivals to judge for himself

CHINA

You know that Irving Berlin tune "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun? Well, it could have been written about the rivalry between Hong Kong and Shanghai. "I'm superior, you're inferior. I'm the big attraction, you're the small. I'm the major one, you're the minor one": those cantankerous words express to perfection the sparring between China's two great commercial cities. And that bit where Ethel Merman belts out, "I can jump a hurdle even with my girdle" – er, I'll have to think about that bit.

You know that Irving Berlin tune "Anything You Can Do" from Annie Get Your Gun? Well, it could have been written about the rivalry between Hong Kong and Shanghai. "I'm superior, you're inferior. I'm the big attraction, you're the small. I'm the major one, you're the minor one": those cantankerous words express to perfection the sparring between China's two great commercial cities. And that bit where Ethel Merman belts out, "I can jump a hurdle even with my girdle" – er, I'll have to think about that bit.

During a 10-day journey, five days spent with each of these sparring partners, the question of which city has the greater future repeatedly creeps into conversations. In Hong Kong a taxi driver insists there is a Beijing-government conspiracy to ensure that Hong Kong will fall behind Shanghai. A Hong Kong socialite tells me the only reason Shanghai looks so busy is because no one has a home to go to. And then there is the waiter who tells me Shanghai is what Hong Kong was like 20 years ago, but that it will surpass it.

Hong Kong is split into two parts: Kowloon, which is on mainland China, and Hong Kong Island just off its coast which has that famous high-rise skyline. Now here's the dilemma. While an island residence puts you slightly more at the heart of the action, you don't see the emblematic skyline in all its glory. And that's a loss, because that line-up of international headquarters makes you realise that, despite talk about Hong Kong facing tougher times, this is one rich town.

The source of this wealth is continually on display too: international trade. In the harbour there are junks, naval ships, cargo carriers – and then you can see the Star Ferries crossing back and forth between Kowloon and the Island, glinting in the afternoon sunlight. Well, I could, because this is the knocks-your-socks-off view that greets me the moment I pull back the curtains in my hotel room.

My first full day is a bank holiday. I catch the ferry to Central to walk around the heart of the banking district. One of the most popular architectural stop-offs is the Norman Foster-designed HSBC Building which has a cavernous atrium through which the public can walk. Despite looking as dumpy as a hippo, the building is said to have excellent feng shui, which is taken very seriously here. On holidays and Sundays, it is the favourite haunt of the city's thousands of Filipino maids who come to meet friends, picnic and play cards. It is midday when I walk through, and the echo from their laughing and chattering is deafening.

Despite the heat, I walk the streets hoping to put Hong Kong's reputation for great shopping to the test. At the high end, every international luxury brand you can think of has a store in Hong Kong. Standing shoulder to shoulder in malls such as the Landmark and Harbour City, their glossy goods carry price tags just as intimidating as in London. But I am looking for just one luxury store: Shanghai Tang. Its founder, David Tang, is a local hero. A colourful entrepreneur whose empire has outposts around the world, he is a renowned collector of Chinese art. He also runs the China Club, the most famous hangout for Hong Kong's elite.

When I find the store in Pedder Street, the image of China being sold is one that mixes references to its communism (Mao watches, chunky Red-Star-patterned jumpers), while celebrating luxury with an almost imperial abandon (hand-embroidered sheets, velvet cheongsams). It is easy to see why Tang is so admired in Hong Kong and China – he mixes contradictory elements of the nation's heritage with ease. It's a trick the whole country is trying to achieve.

Another morning is spent in SoHo (South of Hollywood Road) back on the Island, where the best antique and art stores are. While here I spot a restaurant that promises northern Chinese cooking. The restaurant, called Shui Hu Ju, is small with tables divided from each other by gauze screens. Some of the dishes I order pack almost lethal doses of chillies: I have sweat trickling down my back within seconds. I knock back a bottle of beer, but it fails to dampen the flames. I lose the power of speech. I am weeping. It's great.

While the shopping may, for me, be a let down, the food is not. Whether it is a Chinese meal at the Inter-Continental Hotel, supper at Cinecitta in Star Street or casual brunch at Staunton's, the quality of the cooking is always impressive.

My five days in Hong Kong end as spectacularly as they began. A friend in London arranges for me to meet David Tang at his China Club on the top floors of the old Bank of China building in Central. It is mid-week but the joint, as they say, is jumping. There holding court, trademark cigar in hand, is the beaming David Tang. He's fast-talking, full of stories, and dogmatic announcements: "never eat there", "that hotel is terrible", "the one thing you must do in Shanghai is...".

He shows me the stunning restaurant and I stare at table after table of the beautiful and powerful and listen to the Chinese singer who is serenading them. This is perhaps how swinging Shanghai would have been at its peak. But does Shanghai have any swing left in it now? I am about to find out.

I am on the 30th floor of the just opened Four Seasons hotel. It's late afternoon and already the light is fading, I pull back the curtains. And all I see is grey. Storm clouds are heading straight for me and down on the streets I can see hundreds of cyclists sporting fetching yellow capes and rain hats. As my eyes readjust to the poor light, I begin to make out skyscrapers dotted all over the city and at the base of most are ancient labyrinths of red-roofed houses and open-fronted stores that are completely out of keeping with their looming neighbours. And each tower seems to have some whimsical architectural flourish: one has on a giant crown, another is shaped like a pen.

Everyone in Hong Kong has recommended that the coolest places for dinner are in a small area called Xiantiandi, a 20-minute walk from the hotel. On the way I pass stores and tiny offices where people are playing cards and eating bowls of noodles.

My route takes me through People's Square, home to the National Theatre and the Communist Party offices. I see advertisements for the Red Army pasted next to others for the latest Motorola phones and Volkswagen cars. And then I come to Xiantiandi, which throws your perceptions of the city even more.

Xiantiandi is an area of smart shops and restaurants, some ultra-modern in their aesthetic, others built to look like old Chinese buildings, although all of them were constructed in the past few years. Incongruously, at the heart of the development is the restored building where the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921.

I have dinner at a restaurant called T8 where the maître d' is an American woman and the menu international hip. It offers dishes such as tuna wrapped in pancetta. Could this be the city where a friend told me that 10 years ago there was nowhere to eat at night, and all the food he had was disgusting?

Worn out and unwilling to get drenched again, I take a cab back to the hotel (a £1 fare). Inside the car is a sign in English warning that "psychos or drunkards without guardians are prohibited". Thankfully, I have only had two glasses of wine.

After breakfast the following day I strike out for the Bund, the boulevard that runs alongside the Huang Pu River and is lined with we're-here-to-stay-looking buildings erected by the British, French and Americans when large parts of this city were being run by them.

One of David Tang's tips had been to sneak inside the Pudong Development Bank, the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, on the Bund. "Greatest banking hall in the world," he'd insisted. How did something so western survive the Cultural Revolution? Especially in Shanghai where the destruction and persecution was at its most evil?

It's not only this stone edifice that has managed to live to see Shanghai's renaissance. You can still see the Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel), the old British Consulate and even the Shanghai Club. Some of the buildings have been restored, others lie empty. The pace of change is awe-inspiring. There are the grand projects: the new Pudong airport, the construction of a high-speed mono-rail to link city and airport. There are also cranes everywhere you look helping to build more and more skyscrapers and shopping malls. And, consequently, you see large areas of traditional housing being torn down (according to my Shanghai Daily, 800,000 families have been rehoused since 1991). The official line is that everyone is delighted to be moved to modern flats, I hope it is all so rosy.

That night I have a passable dinner at Ashanti Dome, a restaurant housed in a disused Orthodox church which was built in the 1930s. The staff are so eager, they manage to serve two courses and coffee and have me back on the street in under 30 minutes. Then I notice that next door is a bar flying the gay rainbow flag.

Here's the scene. A small room with a square bar in the centre and about 20 patrons of all ages, shapes and sizes, except that winning combination of young and good looking. No sooner have I ordered a beer than a young man comes over and starts chatting. He says he is a "talking boy" which he explains is "someone who talks to you in a bar, and if everyone is happy, goes back to your hotel room with you". His attempts at doing business are not aided by my non-existent Chinese and his use of a hand-held translating machine to compose each sentence. Indeed, it seems to me he would be better off marketing himself as a typing boy. Realising that he is on to a loser, he changes bar stools the second the next drinker arrives. And I am out of there quicker than you can type "help".

I catch a cab to Face, a bar in a red-brick villa that's surrounded by manicured park land. The change in atmosphere couldn't be more pronounced. It is like walking into a great house party. The bar is heaving and the crowd is handsome. There is a pool table and an antique-looking four-poster bed on which girls and boys are lounging on silk pillows, knocking back Martinis. I find it hard to leave.

Over the following days, I walk along the tree-lined avenues of the former French Concession. I go to the National Theatre to see the acrobats and have a Chinese massage. I take the metro to Pudong, home to the 88-storey Jinmao Tower, the tallest building in China. I resist – only just – the kitsch Mao memorabilia in the Dongtai Lu antiques market.

On my last night, I have dinner at M on the Bund which is on the seventh floor of a 1920s building. Opened in 1999, the restaurant has become Shanghai's most celebrated dining spot. It's run by an Australian, Michelle Garnault, but like most of the hip restaurants in Shanghai, the company was founded in Hong Kong.

While I wait for my food, I get some fresh air on the roof terrace. Yet again the sky is blacked out with clouds. Back in Hong Kong people had told me that five days was too long to stay in Shanghai, that I'd get bored. But Shanghai really has regained some of its old spirit of glamour mixed with money. Sure it's not as sophisticated as Hong Kong, but it's a place you think about the minute you leave, wondering how you might get back. And, you know what, I think it could jump any hurdle, even in its girdle.

Getting there

Andrew Tuck flew to Hong Kong with Virgin Atlantic. A return flight flying into Hong Kong and out of Shanghai with Virgin Atlantic and an internal connecting flight with Dragonair costs from £650 return through Trailfinders (020-7938 3939).

Being there

Andrew Tuck stayed in Hong Kong at the Grand Stanford Inter-Continental and the Hotel Inter-Continental (0800 028 9387; visit www.intercontinental.com). Double rooms start from £202 per per night and £266 per room per night respecitively. In Shanghai he stayed at the Four Seasons (00 800 6488 6488; www.fourseasons.com), where double rooms start from $356 (£238).

Further information

Contact the Hong Kong Tourist Board (020-7533 7100; www.discoverhongkong.com) and the China National Tourist Office Brochure request and information line (0900 1600188, calls cost 60p per minute).