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Photographys by Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
The front door of Emily Prager's house in Shanghai


«At Home Abroad
Settling Down in a City in Motion

(...)

I left Manhattan a year ago, after a lifetime there. I was annoyed at spending $20 for a hamburger, depressed by designer boutiques on Bleecker Street, weary of the hovering specter of Al Qaeda and still grieving over the demise of the Thalia. I was getting old waiting for the real estate bubble to burst and the city to regain its vibrancy. I decided to move myself and my 12-year-old daughter, Lulu — whom I had adopted as a baby in China — from the old capital of the world to the new: to make a home in Shanghai, a city of the future.
I knew something about Shanghai, having been here on trips several times in the last few years. The city was always so excited it could hardly contain itself. It is a microcosm of the Asian boom, stuffed with people giddy on hope and thrilled to be changing. It recalls the greatness of New York in the early ’70s, except for one thing: Like the rest of China, Shanghai was largely closed to the outside world, and real economic growth, for nearly 50 years after World War II. It is a place where every car on the road is brand new and every pet recently acquired, but the person you just met might trace his family back 70 generations. The modernity and polish that Manhattan learned between 1945 and 1995, Shanghai is cramming for as fast as it can, and it’s fascinating to watch.
But visiting a city is one thing; making a home in it is quite another. (...)»in THE NEW YORK TIMES- 19.07.07