The word discombobulated was invented by Americans in the 1820s, which was typically hyperbolic of them. What were they complaining about? They had no jet lag back then. They had no rapid-onset culture shock. Or skyscrapers. Or gridlock.
For proper discombobulation, you need to hop on a plane to Shanghai circa now, stagger out of the airport, have some noodles for breakfast (or is it dinner?), then go for an aimless wander in the humid urban morass. I’ve done this twice before and found it quite, well, discombobulating.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Stepping straight out of boring old Europe into a whirling Far Eastern metropolis is a deeply destabilising but deeply exciting thing to do. It can get out of hand, though. You see them everywhere, discombobulated tourists, clutching their bum bags, tongues hanging out, eyes glazed, with absolutely no idea what time of day or night it is. They’ll go home four days later to tell tall tales of far-flung adventure. But they haven’t really got to grips with the place. All they’ve really done is managed not to get run over.
You can get help, of course. Until now, you’ve had guidebooks, tour guides and concierges. But concierges are no use when the restaurant they recommend has no English menu, and of the 431 things on the very Chinese one, you’re pretty sure 430 of them involve snake testicles. Tour guides can be restrictive and boring. Guidebooks are untrustworthy. But now there is a fourth and finer solution to Shanghai discombobulation: a mobile concierge.
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I said I like spicy food, and got a bowl of chillies mixed with a tiny bit of pork For £95, and counting, a day, a new company called AtYourSide will dispatch a crack guide-cum-personal-assistant-cum-translator to be, well, at your side. Mine was called Valerie and, an hour after I’d arrived in Shanghai, she had me buying vegetables and dumplings at Ningbo Road Market with a chef who would then cook them up for lunch (or is it breakfast?) in someone’s apartment somewhere near the city centre. Discombobulating, yes, but absolutely delicious.
An hour after that, I was attached by sidecar to a Chinese army motorbike driven disappointingly sedately by a Frenchman who moved to Shanghai because he thought it was a bit like Paris.
Those crazy French — but he knew his way around. After a disorientating zigzag through the local rat runs of the French Concession (yes, okay, it is a bit like Paris), we ended up at 1933, a slaughterhouse. You’re thinking, why would I fly all that way to look at a slaughterhouse? But I’m going to stick my neck on the line and claim that this is the world’s most beautiful slaughterhouse, a huge, spiralling concrete art-deco tower, built in 1933 and now transformed into a very modern art hub of galleries, shops and studios.
Markets, lunch, motorbikes, art hubs: enough, already? No. Valerie thought it was time for tea. We took a taxi, we walked down a cul-de-sac, we walked up some stairs into another apartment and a very precise, very intoxicating tea ceremony with a woman who made the Oracle from the Matrix look unperceptive. For a brief moment, I felt as if I understood everything, absolutely everything about almost everything. The meaning of life was... nope, it’s gone. I had it, but it went. I tried to find it again at the bottom of a glass of gin gimlet back on the Bund. Then Valerie said it was time to get my favourite dancing trousers copied.
The dancing trousers, by the way, are only my favourites because not one but two women in my life have said I looked good in them. This is unprecedented. These are special trousers. Over the years, though, the bottoms have frayed. The pockets have shot through. The waist has become inexplicably tight. So I had taken them to Shanghai in the hope of a solution.
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“They copied Kate’s wedding dress in four hours,” I’d said to Valerie in the car from the airport, waving my trousers at her. “Surely they can do these... with a slightly wider waistband.”
Valerie, who spent her twenties dealing with the mad, unpredictable requests of CEOs as a globe-trotting executive assistant, had remained unruffled. This was nothing. A call was made. A tailor was enlisted. The price was negotiated. And, next morning, I had a perfect, slightly expanded pair of dancing trousers.
The real beauty of the AtYourSide idea is that you can adapt your day as you go. You aren’t doomed to follow an umbrella-wielding bore around the full expanse of ancient Chinese history. That can be arranged, at the click of the fingers. And, equally, can be unarranged. So, on the second day, sacrilegiously, we cut short the tour of the quite touristy Ming-period gardens in the centre of town and made a break for a calligraphy lesson and a trip to a shop selling hand-painted salad bowls. Because I needed a salad bowl.
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Then I said I liked spicy food. Valerie summoned a table at the sort of local restaurant you’d never find if you were all alone and discombobulated. I had a bowl of chillies mixed with a tiny bit of spiced pork. On behalf of all Englishmen who think they can take their spicy food, I toughed it out. I can report that, before I lost all sensation in my tongue and throat, I found it delicious.
Then I said had a sore neck. Valerie threatened me with Mr Painful, aka Dr Guo, a Chinese medical doctor who was once a hospital bone-setter. He would return my body to equilibrium in a way no western spa treatment ever could, she said. But he was £60 an hour. And he was called Mr Painful. Was there something a bit cheaper/less painful? A quick phone call, an extensive argument with a taxi driver, and I was paying a woman £14 to rub my feet. And she wasn’t called Mrs Painful.
AtYourSide offers a different kind of discombobulation. It’s managed and heightened. It’s crazy, but comfortably so. If you’re doing four days in Shanghai (and you must), I’d do days one and four on your own and days two and three with your Valerie. That way, you’ll get the yin and yang, a chance to wander round open-mouthed on your own and some valuable time when you’re not.
Matt Rudd travelled as a guest of the Peninsula Shanghai
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AtYourSide (0086 21 6390 6086, atyourside.asia) charges about £95 a day, plus costs. It operates in Shanghai and Beijing, but will soon cover Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Xi’an and Guilin. The market and lunch with a chef costs £40, the tea ceremony involves a donation of £10-£20 and the Sideway sidecar tour costs £90 for two hours.
How to get there
Nonstop flights from Heathrow to Shanghai start at about £800 return with Virgin Atlantic (0844 209 7777, virgin-atlantic.com), British Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) or Air China (00 800 86 100999, airchina.co.uk).
Where to stay
The Peninsula Shanghai (00 800 2828 3888, peninsula.com/shanghai) is right on the Bund and has doubles from £251, B&B. Check out the rooftop bar, which has stunning views. Chai Shanghai Living (00 86 21 3603 3511, chailiving.com) has several high-spec apartments. Prices start at £90 a night, with a minimum stay of four nights. You get 20%-40% off if you book through AtYourSide.
Tour operators
Cox & Kings (0845 868 2885, coxandkings.co.uk) has four nights at the Peninsula Shanghai from £1,595pp, including BA flights from Heathrow and private transfers. Or try Audley Travel (01993 838200, audleytravel.com) or Wendy Wu Tours (0844 499 3899, wendywutours.co.uk).