Insights & Analysis

Months ago, I moved to Portugal for personal reasons. The first thing that struck me after leaving Hong Kong was how low the buildings were, allowing you to see more of the blue sky. Portuguese culture is remarkably strong, far stronger than French culture at present, evident in how locals eat traditional dishes daily and in traditions like fado persisting in concert halls and the Tunas university students performing in their academic costumes. What I discovered is that a country's strength and character lie not just in economics or politics, but in how seriously its people take their traditions, their culture, and their daily practices. Portugal has given me some of the sweetest moments of these past years, from the calm of Alentejo to the beauty of Douro and Porto's architecture.

I had the window seat on the flight out of Shanghai. We took off from Pudong in the early evening, banked north, and for the next two hours I could not stop looking down. Anyone who flies regularly knows the usual rhythm of a night departure from a large city. The grid blazes beneath you for a few minutes, the suburbs thin into scattered clusters, and then you are over darkness, the occasional town passing like a small ship at sea. That is what cities normally look like from altitude. A bright centre, a fading edge, and then nothing.

In this piece, I walk through what a 560-year-old covered market in Istanbul reveals about how trade, trust, and money actually work. From the Ottoman guild system that banned competition and made theft almost unthinkable, to the central bank that recently sent carts of cash through medieval corridors because the formal financial system couldn't keep up — the Grand Bazaar is less a tourist destination than a living case study in institutional economics. I reflect on price discovery without screens, credit without contracts, and a wholesale gold network that moves billions through canvas-covered trolleys pushed by hand. Some of the most sophisticated market mechanics in the world never needed a terminal to function.