A developer in Shanghai is building a replica of Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch on an island off the city’s coast. The news made a splash in the government-run China Daily newspaper this week, and set me thinking.

Where do I live? Read more

Here’s a nugget for India’s new railway ministry: In the first five months of this year, China built 1,942.5 km of new rail lines with an unprecedented 120 per cent increase in railway infrastructure investment compared to last year.

India’s railway network (63,327 km) is denser than Mainland China (79,000 km) but India is not yet building tracks for bullet trains hurtling at 350 kmph. Read more

It is Sunday morning and I want to fly 1,907 km away just for breakfast.

At 8 am, it is too early for the Indian restaurants in Beijing to open. But as I write this, Indians are walking into a restaurant to order the typical Maharashtrian fare of poha, upma and the sweet semolina pudding called shira. In China! Some of them will eat vada pav (spicy potato cutlet in a bun). In China! Read more

At this time last year I was on a flight from Mumbai where I had spent six years, to Beijing where I had spent six days on a previous recce trip.

I have now lived in China for one year, a year that seemed very long on my own in 21M. I like to think that the M in my apartment number stands for Mumbai and suburban Malad where I used to live. My only friend in this 42-storey apartment is a young professional migrant from Mumbai. Read more

My week began with a 30-steel-storey fire across my street and a visit to China’s countryside in a bus led by police cars flashing red lights and halting highway traffic until we passed.

Life in China often feels like living in a well-directed reality show. Your senses stay on alert to try and distinguish between the spontaneous and the staged. Read more

In November, I visited China’s New York and Mumbai’s envy.

And I’m relieved I don’t live in it, despite the six years I spent, until last March, in the Mumbai of Shanghai dreams. Read more