I just checked out the latest New Yorker, great stuff, and came across Jonathan Franzen's "Letter from the Yangtze Delta." A good read. One striking fact: Shanghai is now approaching 20 million inhabitants.
Here's Franzen writing his first impression of this gargantuan megalopolis: "It was as if the gods of world history had asked, 'Does somebody want to get into some really unprecedentedly deep shit?' and the place had raised its head and said, 'Yeah!'