Horatio Clare, appeared at The Bookworm International Literary Festival, Beijing in March. In a series of four postcards published on our website this week, he shares his impressions:

Industrial super-revolution! The rush, the cash, the fizz, the flash, rag picker tycoons and the billboards from Blade Runner, twenty-storey faces and brands strobing pallor through black mizzle. That was where I found them. They were dancing a Chinese waltz by the light of Gucci, couples of all ages - though the old are the most notorious. "You don't mess with the old people! They play their music LOUD and they dance together and if you ask them to turn it down they shout at you." It was a world city when my grandparents danced here in the 1930s. It is more world than city now. The name means fish trap: twenty-two million willing, thrusting fishes! That is Shanghai.

Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare has been selected to the Wales Literature Exchange 2014 - 2015 Bookcase, our annual selection of recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation. His journey to China was organised in partnership with Literature Across Frontiers and supported by Wales Arts International.