Stella Wong describes Shanghai in her novel  Shanghai, The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City

“In Shanghai’s prime, no city in the Orient, or the world for that matter, could compare with it. At the peak of its spectacular career, the swamp-ridden metropolis surely ranked as the most pleasure-mad, rapacious, corrupt, strife-ridden, licentious, squalid and decadent city in the world.

It was the most pleasure-mad because nowhere else did the population pursue amusement, from feasting to whoring, dancing to powder-taking, with such abandoned zeal. It was rapacious because greed was its driving force. Strife-ridden because calamity was always at the door. Licentious because it catered to every depravity known to man. Squalid because misery stared brazenly in the face. Decadent because morality, as every Shanghai resident knew, was irrelevant.”