There are multiple ways to define Shanghai. There’s the more modern version, with beautiful lanes full of expensive yoga studios or artisan coffee shops, lined with the London Plane Tree (法国梧桐) and the Wukang Mansion (武康大楼), and renovated parks like the North Bund (北外滩) and West Bund (西岸). There’s also the Shanghai as the international metropolis and a symbol of China’s rising economic power, there’s the Lujiazui (陆家嘴) skyline — with the Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠) and high offices of Chinese and multinational corporations. There’s the Maglev train or the high-speed train (高铁) that represent China’s rising technology. Then there’s the ‘Paris of the East’ or ‘East-meets-West’ (十里洋场) kind of Shanghai, that harkens back with nostalgia to the 1920s and 30s, with its art deco architecture, and its qipao (旗袍)-wearing calendar poster girls art (月份牌), the Haipai (海派), and the west bank of the Bund (外滩). There’s also a more recent ‘old Shanghai’ with the shikumen (石库门) architecture and disappearing areas such as Laoximen (老西门).

I always identified with different versions of Shanghai, but this week it was the twentieth-century one, with coffee and cake at Kaisiling (凯司令) on Nanjing West Road (南京西路). The place is nearly a hundred years old and turns up in plenty of blogs and books — Eileen Chang’s ‘Lust, Caution’, for one, and the film of the same name.

There’s a bakery on the ground floor and a counter for take-away coffee, with a café and restaurant on the two floors above, all done up in old-fashioned interior, the staircase decorated with images from the ’20s and ’30s. When we visited, the place was nearly empty, which had me worried about its future — though in a video from 海上心聲, shot on a sunnier day, it’s packed. And when the coffee and cake arrived, it was such a welcome thing to be handed proper tableware instead of a disposable cup from one of the chains (M Stand, Peet’s, Starbucks, Luckin, Cotti, Tim’s, Costa).

Across the street is the Shanghai Watch (上海手表) store. After eight years here, and with the move back looming, I wanted something to mark the stay — or rather, to bring a bit of Shanghai home with me. I know people who’ve done this with a tattoo, but a watch felt more right for me, especially because I discovered there’s a Shanghai watch brand, with its logo being the two characters (上海) arranged into the silhouette of Broadway Mansions (百老汇大厦).

So in my last week as a resident of this city, these two spots, just meters away from each other, seemed like the right occasion. And despite the rain, it did feel like a warm day in the city.