A Chinese woman dances the salsa with perfection while a Norwegian man shows off with his fluent Mandarin at a Latin party in Shanghai. Kilometers away on another side of town, a Brazilian woman is launching a website for her compatriots in China.

On the other side of the globe, a German was just accepted for his master’s in the United State thanks to an internship in Shanghai several months ago.

These are a snapshot of a city at the heart of the next stage of globalization: a melting pot of the East and the West, south and north.

The main change is historically subtle but ever more noticeable: Shanghai is becoming a place for all stages of careers and lifestyles.

A 2016 report by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences on the city’s social and economic development says there had been almost 180,000 registered foreigners living in Shanghai by 2013. And the expat population is increasing 7,000 every year. The report estimates that by 2040, the figure might reach 800,000.

Take the case of Jasmine Shi and Mauricio Reyes.

Shi comes from northern China, Qinghuandao in Hebei Province. Reyes is a Mexican who lived in many countries before settling down in China.

Hard workers and entrepreneurs, they met in Shanghai and now are joining forces as a couple and as professionals to build a fitness brand, Style Fitness, that is globally exportable. Could be to Indonesia, could be to New York.

“I have many friends who left Shanghai with their hands empty because they just wanted to go to parties.

“But here, you have to work hard,” Mauricio says.

However, it is Shanghai as a global hub that attracted Shi when she waived an offer in the United Kingdom after finishing her master’s. “I wanted something more lively, a multicultural environment,” she says.

The experience of moving to a big city was one of the things that motivated Jan Moeller to come here.

With a bachelor’s degree in car design, the German considers that the experience in a Shanghai company involved in interior design gave him a valuable boost during his interview for a master’s in the US.

“They (the interviewers) were all really impressed that I had this experience. They didn’t expect that,” says Moeller, from Frankfurt. “To me, it was very good to see how the life is like in a big city.”

However, Per Johan Brandal has decided to ease his studies to have a little of fun after he arrived in China more than two years ago. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business and Mandarin to the point of “enjoying classical Chinese,” he has a new goal of improving his “social skills.” To achieve it, he intends to move in summer from the Fudan University dormitory to live with his girlfriend somewhere in the city.

Brandal, in his part, sees Norway in a similar fashion many Chinese see their hometowns: You have in your heart, but Shanghai is where you “know you need to be.”

While Maria Solis wants to stay in China after finishing her master’s, she “will go wherever there is a good experience to be lived.”

Nevertheless, she admits she’s missing the warm weather and blue shores of Costa Rica.

Despite her adventurous spirit, Solis’ homesickness is entirely understandable. Connecting back home is the basic instinct of many migrants everywhere. Knowing how to express the way you want your hair cut or where to find the food you miss from childhood are needs that even the most globalized citizen has once and a while, for some.

The bonding between immigrants can be seen both physically — in such places as Chinatown or expat bars — and virtually through Internet connections to homelands for business opportunities in Japanese, Turkish or Portuguese.

With the growing connection between Brazil and China (both members of BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China), Brazilian Mauren Zselinszky has launched, with a friend who is also living in Shanghai, a website dedicated to the relations between the two nations.

And the virtual world, especially in WeChat communities, is the new platform connecting the places expats want to go. In those spaces, services such as hairdresser can be easily found in their mother tongues.

It was in one of these communities that Abdurehman Munir found the comfort to know where to find halal food when he arrived in Shanghai last year.

After graduating in finance-related subjects in Pakistan, Munir is now in Shanghai to learn Mandarin as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Project, which is included in the “One Belt and Road” initiative.

“I like the city,” he says. “Once you get to know the places, you can go by yourself.”

The convergence of people from all over China and the world in Shanghai is a growing phenomenon, says Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, an independent think tank.

He says the number of people born in foreign countries who are working and living in Beijing had increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2013 and now account for about 0.5 percent of its total population. And the emergence of new communities in Shanghai underpins its place as the country’s economic capital. He also points to the number of people flocking to Shanghai for a better life.

Wang says the city and the country still need more skilled immigrants and students. He sees government policies, such as the Chinese green card, as an official recognition of this.

The growth in the numbers of immigrants outside the traditional European powers — more Pakistanis and Latinos, for example — opens life beyond the English-speaking world.

This happens not only in the case of Munir searching for halal food, but also in more intimate situations.  

When Mexican Reyes’ mother came to Shanghai, for example, Shi had to work out her Spanish, since the elder woman doesn’t speak English.

Brandal and Solis, on their side, make some effort to escape English when chatting on WeChat, preferring Chinese. Together, they learn to flow across new languages and dance steps.

Who knows, if, among things yet to be imagined, maybe the 21st century global Shanghai will export some form of Shanghainese salsa?