Justin O'Connor and Gu Xin

The title of this text comes from Jon Solomon’s reworking of Patti Smith’s opening lines in Gloria. The resonance with ‘somebody else’s sins’ and the almost satanic rejection of a dominant discourse were just perfect at a time when the whole world seems enamored of Shanghai’s glamorous modernity. Patti Smith also takes us back to an ur-scene of contemporary urban regeneration – the transformation of 1970s Lower Manhattan from economic basket case and anarchic playground to the neo-bohemian property boom charted by Sharon Zukin in Loft Living.