The Shanghai World Financial Center is the second tallest building in the world. I can see it from my balcony, this huge bottle-opener-shaped monstrosity, just a block away. I can’t help imagining natural disasters toppling it over each time I look up at it – it’s so big, we all seem so helpless and tiny next to it. For the first 2 months, from our 22nd floor flat, I was careful not to step too close to the balcony.

On a premature spring day some friends and I climbed to the top of the tower, paying an insane entrance fee to look down at Shanghai, reduced to a scale model from this height. This is how power feels like, I think.