Call me a chuavinist, but I prefer the stink of Bombay to the stink of Shanghai.
The smells of Bombay duck, the shit of all of the open defecators, and the effluent-poisoned sewage mix up to produce an alive sort of smell- like an unsavoury ruffian you nevertheless befriend, and who eventually grows on you.
In Shanghai, the smog presses down on the city, trapping the garbage, which ages with a stale, withered smell. It’s like the smell of the elderly grandmother you never have anything to talk to about.