Shanghai
City on the Yangtze delta, China.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breakneck | Dan Wang | setting | Human-scaled streets of the French Concession; the city where the engineering state works. |
| Breakneck | Dan Wang | subject | Wang explains why he left Shanghai for Yale Law School after zero-Covid collapsed, weighing its urban virtues against censorship and the blocking of his personal website. |
Sub-places
- Embankment Building
- Former French Concession
- Gigafactory Shanghai
- Shanghai Disneyland
- Shanghai World Financial Center
- The Bund
- Urumqi Road (Shanghai)
Breakneck — Dan Wang (2025)
Source: Readwise highlight
I was much happier to live in Shanghai, where many streets have remained human-scaled rather than being built for cars. The French Concession, where I lived, remains leafy and full of cafés.
- Role: setting
- In the book: The author lived in the leafy, café-filled French Concession and cycled a fifteen-mile riverside path past the old World Expo site and preserved industrial buildings, in contrast with car-built Beijing and Shenzhen.
- Why it matters: The book’s example of the engineering state getting a city right.
Breakneck — Dan Wang (2025)
Source: Breakneck · Readwise highlight
Shanghai has many things superior to that of any American city: walkable and safe streets, vibrant street life, splendid food, an ease to go anywhere in the city or the country through mass transit.
- Role: subject
- In the book: Wang explains why he left Shanghai for Yale Law School after zero-Covid collapsed, weighing its urban virtues against censorship and the blocking of his personal website. He returns once at the end of 2024 and finds it strangely muted, with emptier restaurants and shopping districts lacking vitality.
- Why it matters: Shanghai stands for both the best of the engineering state’s urbanism and the political cost of living under it; the 2024 revisit works as a barometer of ‘Fortress China’.