A weekend market in Shanghai's Jing'an district is crowded with visitors, including foreign residents, in June. [PHOTO BY GAO ERQIANG/CHINA DAILY]

"The management of the COVID-19 outbreak has changed our impression about the city and the country in a very positive way. We feel very safe in Shanghai and we catch each and every opportunity to discover the city. I will try to bring my friends and family from France to visit this awesome city as soon as possible."

Monika Lin, a US artist whose father emigrated to the United States from Fujian province, says:"I knew that much of the media portrayal of Shanghai, both positive and negative, was inaccurate, orientalist or incomplete. Nonetheless, when I arrived in 2006, I was surprised by how welcoming Shanghai is.

"Although massive and extremely fast-paced, it has a walkable scale to its infrastructure which makes it accessible and manageable. What continues to impress me is that most neighborhoods are comprised of networks which include residential apartments and businesses, diverse populations, small interior parks and courtyards creating integrated living rather than segregated areas as occurs often in the West," she adds.

According to the survey respondents, their perception of the city has been influenced by the city's cultural infrastructure, including libraries, theaters and museums.

Lin, who now teaches art at the Shanghai campus of New York University, says she has witnessed the astounding growth of the art scene in the city.

"When I arrived in 2006, contemporary galleries could be categorized into large-scale commercial endeavors and small, intimate spaces, with very little in between. There was no contemporary art museum. The majority of the galleries exclusively represented Chinese artists with little international-artist presence," Lin recalls.

"Today, there is a huge upsurge in contemporary art with both a Chinese and international presence," she says. "I love that I can see art inside an apartment-gallery, or a museum such as the Power Station of Art, or at the Pompidou Center, or at art fairs and expos, and underground events."