Shanghai, which has become a reference point for the world of luxury and hospitality, is starting up again in a big way, giving us hope for the future of the new normal.

Now that the number of infections can be counted on the fingers of one hand – tracing is continuous and widespread –universities, factories, bars, restaurants and amusement parks (including the Shanghai Disney Resort) are opening their doors once again. The city held various events for all ages: a range of concerts, house evenings and DJ sets took place. Viewed from our side of the world that is like looking back in time. We can only hope that it is a case of back to the future.

After two months in which everything shut down (more than two months for the big cities) and restrictions were introduced, the hospitality sector is now bouncing back. In the first week in October, a nationwide public holiday in China, 600,000 couples got married and 637 million people started travelling around the country again. And that was a real lifeline for the hospitality, catering and banqueting industry.

Online channels have undoubtedly been further strengthened, but now every shopping experience tends to be multi-channel. Now, everyone is looking forward to Single’s Day on 11 November: an event which in China has been happening on a truly gigantic scale (39.5 billion dollars were generated in sales last year) since it went online in 2009 with Alibaba. And that is quite something, to say that it all began in the 1990s when some students at the University of Nanjing came up with a way of splashing out on a particular purchase, enjoying the feel-good factor of an impulse buy, and dining out, not in spite of being single, but because of it. Over 100,000 restaurants, bars and clubs are now gearing up for the day and preparing themed evenings.

People really are spoilt for choice, not least of all because the summer saw the opening of a large number of new establishments – including many that had had to delay their launch as a result of the pandemic. Among the most interesting new openings is the legendary dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong, Tim Ho Wan, which enjoys the reputation of being “the world’s cheapest Michelin restaurant”, and which has now opened a locale on the fourth floor of the Jingan Kerry Centre.

And talking of star ratings, for 2021 the famous red guide will bring more confirmation of the quality the city offers, awarding to Shanghai 43 macarons, with 32 getting one star, 10 getting two (including the new Da Vittorio) and one getting three: Ultraviolet, the restaurant opened in 2012 by French chef Paul Pairet with a single table: another trend, possibly, that will catch on in future.

This new wave of openings suggests certain trends for the next decade, including artisanal preparations and veganism. Examples include DuLi, a restaurant with “a Californian atmosphere and Chinese flavours”, where the menu is entirely plant based; it was opened last July by new Dutch restaurateur Thijs Bosma, who was inspired by the vegetarian cuisine of Chengdu. Meanwhile, the creative Danish craft brewery Mikkeller made its debut in the city last June with a bar and shop in the trendy Jing’an district.

There is growing interest in Mocktails, (zero-alcohol cocktails), with various locales now offering some quite sophisticated versions based on Seedlip, the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirit. This is another direction things look set to move in, in the years to come.