barrier. I probably didn't feel quite the same from a "foreign city" perspective because I lived in China/Asia for the better part of 15 years. We almost moved to Beijing at one point, but that winter the air quality got so bad the gov't blocked the US Embassy website because it was reporting the real air quality numbers, which were much worse than the official central gov't data. With small kids at the time, we were not too thrilled about the idea of living there. Shanghai definitely has a very different vibe from Beijing. Much more foreigner friendly overall, although the language barrier was about the same as Beijing.