Zephyr 05 (Windy Neon Rain)

Shanghai is known for a lot of things - for being one of the most populous cities on the planet; For the Oriental Pearl Tower on the banks of the Bund; For great culture - art, museums, and cuisine. But for me, one of my fondest memories of Shanghai was all the neon.

Nanjing Road at night is a perfect example, and when I visited Shanghai for the first time, there was also all this neon along various crisscrossing sections of city freeways, making the whole city just seem to have this warm glow. But I recently read an article that over time that neon feel is slowly disappearing. As the municipality and business continue to convert from neon to more efficient LEDs, pictures that may have captured the spirit of that city neon and those memories I have may eventually be all that remain - ok maybe I’m being overdramatic but one memory of mine sticks out and is one of my goto memories when I think of this city that never sleeps.

So I was on a tour of China, a long time ago, and part of the tour brought us to the fine city of Shanghai. But on this particular part of the tour and on this particular day, it was torrentially rainy, with strong gusting winds. Although the city itself is susceptible to typhoons and freak thunderstorms, this wasn’t a day that reached that level of climate challenge, but it was aggressive enough to make tourist activities difficult.

I remember the tour bus pulling alongside Nanjing Road, the roar of the wind and the rain hitting the tour bus window; strong enough to blur everything, as the water rushed down the across the glass, but the one thing that could penetrate that wind-driven aquatic gloss, was the prismatic and colourful neon from those city street lights.