While celebrating Lunar New Year might look different this year, there are other ways to escape the solitude of the pandemic: Immersing yourself in the vibrancy of China’s most populous city — from the comfort of home.

I was a little nervous sharing this piece — I can't do such a dynamic city justice, but hope I still captured some of the city’s essence. I've never published anything remotely personal or close to my heart about China. This only has the teeniest bit of that tangentially and already it was making me really anxious (I don't know how you all do it), plus I just wanted to make sure I got everything “right”. I was grateful to my editor Claire Sibonney who roped me into this and to the team at enRoute who made my simple words look so visually gorgeous — you really need to look at it from a desktop to do that opening image justice.