We would like to pay our heartfelt respect to the people of Shanghai. These people are the uncut flowers of an ancient tree,

with branches reaching back through millennia.

 We were privileged indeed to be able to fly from New Zealand to China, and to wander wide-eyed around a timeless city

bursting at the seams. Shanghai is a city doused in complex, chaotic and colourful history, where time feels circular not linear.

Turn a corner and you’re on a street that has remained completely unchanged since the 1930’s, turn another corner and you are

back in the thoroughly modern present. Time travel feels possible in Shanghai.

 As tourists from a new world, we do not pretend to know or understand what it is to be a person from Shanghai, but rather

our intentions with this book are to explore what it is to be a person. This is the transcendental nature of travel and artistic

expression; we observe what is other so that we might come to better understand ourselves.

There is something about being outside your own country that makes you spring wide open in a way you can’t at home. We

 hope our travel-inspired openness has translated to these pages, that this book takes you on a journey whilst sitting still, and

that the words make the pictures move.