this is what i’m talking about. taken from a convenience store there in november.
I lived in Nanjing for a couple of years as well (2012-2014, and again for a few months in 2015). Also lived in Kunming for a bit and spent some time in Shanghers and Beijing.
I was originally drawn over there to do a postdoc under an old friend/colleague who’d become a professor there. I was living in Germany at the time and generally happy with my life there, albeit in a bit of a rut, and had zero interest in ever going to China/Asia or working in academia again. But I figured it’d be something I’d regret if I turned the offer down.
I essentially agree with the other commenters here who’ve lived in China. It was a lot of fun at that time in my life, my first time in Asia, and not at all what I expected.
I wouldn’t necessarily want to live there again or raise kids or start a business or anything there, and Taiwan is objectively a “nicer” place to live, but I can definitely see the attraction for people choosing to live there. It’s sometimes frustrating, dirty, annoying, and all the rest…but also fun and dynamic, with everything moving very fast and a lot of opportunities. I’d occasionally have bad China days, like when I was entering the sixth hour of waiting in a bank trying to receive some money I’d Western Union’d myself and was just fed up with stupid excuses, or when I was hungover on a Sunday and couldn’t tolerate going outside to get food and be stared at constantly…but overall it was really fun.
With respect to “freedom”, I definitely felt a lot “freer” there than any other place I’ve lived, in the sense of “just do what you want but don’t piss any locals off and you’ll be fine”. In the sense of “you can dump the toxic waste in the reservoir if you want, but if we catch you you’ll be executed”. It goes without saying that my experience as a foreigner there isn’t the same as that of a Uyghur or even a typical Chinese person, and I don’t particularly love the government or some of the things they do. But then I don’t particularly love the US or UK governments either or support many of the things they do.
I did hear a couple of months ago from another foreigner visiting Taipei that the government has really started cracking down on certain things with respect to foreigners (drug testing, apartment visits, etc.), and I haven’t visited since 2016, but at the time I was there, in that time of my life, it was great.
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Shanghai is definitely a lot livelier than Taipei. Well-suited to certain fearless go-getter types.
They’ve recently all but dissolved a formerly thriving DIY arts scene in Shanghai. We’ve caught some of the spill-off here in Taipei, so that’s good for us, but I think they’re pretty bored here compared to before.
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Yeah, definitely dynamic and kind of scrappy. It was fun (if exasperating at times) and bred a different kind of expat than Taiwan apparently does. But not like a typical SEA sexpat. To quote from a thing I wrote five years ago:
Jaded businessmen, stoned engineers, ultra-capitalists. Losers, drunks, deadbeats, and the occasional drifter turned novelist. An all-star cast of post-imperialists, unrepentant and unapologetic. Nothing two-dimensional here, no boring dialogue or lack of at least mild intrigue. Just pay attention and your novel writes itself. Up against the wall of an unpredictable alien environment, these characters, these self-imposed exiles—
…
We came here for opportunity and adventure. And when the time is right, we’d like to leave with happy endings and fistfuls of green. No desire for a last-minute chopper escape from the roof of the Ritz. But can you imagine? This lot? Look at us, so varied, so colorful—characters with personas as unique and rare as our very DNA. The Turk, the Dane, the Mad Belgian. The Pope, the Queen, Sexy Barkeep. The Spaniard . . .
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At the risk of being flamed, one thing that unfortunately tends to characterize Taiwanese expats is a desire to suspend their current life stage. They come here at age 22, 25, 29, hoping to have some fun, explore, and put off the next real life step they’d otherwise be expected to take in their home country for just a while longer. Many of them then remain that age for the duration of their time here. Like it’s Neverland.
It’s easy to do this in Taiwan, where so little is generally asked of you. You don’t ever have to grow up if you don’t want to.
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Shanghai to me is just OK. It’s too expensive for what it is and not a true world class city. It’s also China so not free, but I have a good time when I’m there and would consider living there for the bucks
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Easily my least favorite part of making foreign friends here, you have to sift through a fair amount of immature people stuck in limbo. Wonder if that’s something us Big-Noses are picking up from (some of) the locals here 
Definitely also true of many locals. The ones who really want to make something of themselves tend to leave. But ah, you can’t really pick that up from them before coming over. It’s just nice that they enable your continued complacency.
This closely describes what my life was like for my 5 years in Shanghai. And I miss it. I’ve only been back only a half dozen times since leaving 8 years ago and I enjoy it everytime. A lot of my friends and contacts have also long since moved on, and the city has changed in small ways. After the Covid-19 crisis is figured out, I will continue to find ways and reasons to visit.
While I lived there, I was surprised how much of the rest of China I wanted to see. I traveled a bit for work, and those trips were mostly confined to hotel meeting rooms and airports. I look forward to exploring the rest of China more some day, and I don’t expect it to be the same as Shanghai
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Ooh you little bea_ach. I’m 53 going on 23. I refuse to go gently into the night
Seems like most long-term expats are doing the career, family, kids, etc. thing. Which stage are they missing, exactly? The bankruptcy due to medical emergency stage? 
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not me bruddah. All I got is four cameras and seven lenses to keep me company at night.
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No, I was just playing contrarian. I know plenty of Peter Pan types like you described.
In other words … it’s nice for a visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.
That was my impression, anyway, although I was only there for a couple of days.
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Liar. You’ve got an office gig. Sell-out!
Would you go back?
I agree with a lot of your sentiment, especially the feeling ‘freer’ in the sense that you could really just do whatever the f*** you want, take a dump on the street if you gotta. (Downside is that that’s exactly what some people do.) The dictatorship/censorship was a much bigger deal to me, and I felt kind of … anxious, I suppose, the whole time I was there. The constant anxiety/censorship + constantly feeling like I had minor laduzi and a slight cold was really not worth it for me.
Crazy fun to go out drinking & clubbing, though. Honestly, like finley said, I consider Shanghai to be a fine place to visit and even live for a while, but not somewhere I personally would ever think about settling down.
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Imagine loads of soya sauce and salt poured over everything.
Mostly everyone mentions making money, freedom to do whatever, partying and women. I can see how it can be attractive to young adults. Then it is also obvious why many move on after a few years.
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its not very easy to make it work long term there, even if you want to. definitely a young mans / noob to asia game if you ask me.
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