Shanghai is known for its skyscrapers, the Bund and the financial district, its Art Deco buildings, some delicious food, and the forthcoming Expo 2010. But in a recent trip to the city, it became clear that Shanghai is also a City of Books.

On Fuzhou Road, the ‘book street’ of Shanghai (rather a different feel to London’s Charing Cross Road), shops include the Shanghai Ancient Bookstore, the Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore (currently with a very enticing display of English-language books on Shanghai and China), and the piece-de-resistance, the multi-storey Shanghai City of Books, which was buzzing with readers and book-buyers at the end of the working day.

 In-store promotions included book covers printed onto the escalator hand rail, something I’d never seen before, and which made me stop to look at the big pile of books it was promoting. I hope no-one noticed me going up and down the escalator several times to examine this point of sale. Never surprised by my capacity to acquire books in languages I can’t actually read, I amused myself by buying a copy of The Blue Lotus, the Tintin adventure set in China.