This is one square mile in South Shanghai, close to Shanghai South Railway Station and Bus Station. There are other artists in other countries working with their own square miles in India, Bangladesh, UK, Teheran and South Africa. This one's mine. There's also a local sound artist involved, Yin Yi, and Shanghai eArts. They're my host organisation. They're based in this square mile and they chose it, before I arrived.

We're all "mapping the biodiversity, cultural diversity, and aesthetic diversity of our local neighbourhoods."

I'm still trying to figure out Shanghai eArts. But this is China. They moved to this part of Shanghai not long ago. They run a very large Electronic Arts festival biannually and... and they've just started sponsoring the Formula One Red Bull racing team. Posters went up last week announcing this, inside and outside the building complex. But isn't this a cultural organization, state and city funded? And when I ask Xu (English name Felix, my contact person here) about this, he says "we don't understand either, we were just told about it and that was it…" The Shanghai eArts car stickers arrived on Friday and there seem to be new floodlights on the Arts Bar. The other buildings in this block that fronts the eight-lane Shilong Road are mainly engineering factories. This is a bit frontline.

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But I don't need answers. I'm mapping and absorbing. There was the man selling snakes in small canvas bags, water snakes in jars, by the side of the road, attracting a crowd. There were the massive lorries carrying soil from one side of the dual carriageway to the other. There are cycle lanes as wide as minor UK roads. And for a culture that has the reputation for being authoritative, there is the gentle and unique law of the road, where mopeds and bikes rarely use lights at night and where they're driven in many directions at the same time, as well as in and among pedestrians. Just the occasional helmet seen, but never on a cyclist.

So I borrowed a bike myself and began to understand how the system works.

I thought I was doing ok with my reading of the incoming people from the South (South Station and Bus Station for those who can't afford trains). They arrive looking confused carrying large bags, rarely suitcases, and are approached by 'black taxi' drivers (mopeds) and women with rooms to rent. It wasn't till I had help from a translator that I started to see them as 'migrant workers' with their own communities. I found two of these communities within this square mile, basic living standards, communal public toilets and wash-houses. They even have their own street market, aimed at these 'incomers'.

The Shanghainese don't actually see them as locals. Eight hostels are mixed in with the room letting agencies and cheap cafes that face the Bus Station on Shilong Road. Hostel rooms cost between £5 and £10 a night, well out of reach of most of them. Many of them arrive, according to a state TV news item, without a plan. Shanghai, population 17 million, and growing.

I went to Beijing last weekend for a few days and, great, really, but I was itching to get back to this obsessive engagement with a regular, unglamorous city plot, where I'm the only westerner around, and the contrasts are intense.

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One Mile Square Project - www.square-mile.net
Richard Layzell's ongoing blog - http://rescen.net/blog_richard