Seeing blue

Over three days in Shanghai, during an unseasonably warm stretch of September, conversation among my Australian companions inevitably circled back to the people outside our hotel. All day, every day, dozens of Chinese women descended upon the streets outside the Peninsula, dressed in voluminous red tulle ballgowns or head-to-toe new-season Bottega Veneta, with a reluctant boyfriend (or sometimes a whole camera crew) in tow, shooting up a storm of content for their respective social media accounts. Our tour guide for the week, a bubbly local named Joyce, informed us these women travel