Old Shanghai was dying, losing between three and six streets a day. The modern city was strangling it among its many skyscrapers. Soon, in a few years at most, it will have disappeared. Yet, through its narrow and overcrowded alleyways trotted Mr. and Mrs. Yao. She, clutching her purse and their joint life savings; he, clearing a path through the crowd, glancing suspiciously at everyone and signaling to his wife with a shaky, impatient hand. The old man cursed the whole world as he passed through the waves of people. He cursed the maker of the map he was constantly consulting, and which didn't