Stand on the Bund, Shanghai’s historic river front, and look across the water at the throbbing, futuristic Pudong district and you can see why so many people have decided there is no place they would rather be.

In Shanghai you meet people from the US, Australia, Europe, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the rest of China, all attracted not just by jobs but by the chance to be part of a city energetically recreating itself. “Even after three years, every day I see something I’ve never seen before,” Sean Dinsmore, an American who is setting up a glass-walled recording studio in the middle of a bar and restaurant, told me.