Behold, the nice face of Julu Lu. Directly opposite the street’s last strip of seediness lies Leting Jasmine, the domestic house of privilege and expensive cars. It’s a villa of fine Chinese food for fine, entitled people. The more entitled, the higher one goes. The second floor, dubbed Jasmine, is a gorgeous room that escaped the riche chandelier-and-Louis-XIV decorator and went with modern, sleek white interior instead. The headwaiter is an older gentleman in a sharp suit with professional airs. Dinner runs ¥200-250 per person – a matter of concern for some people (not you). For them, there’s Leting, a series of three clubby private rooms on the third floor with a separate menu of refined Huaiyang fare for people who don’t care about prices.

For the rest of us, Jasmine does quite nicely. The food is contemporary Chinese; the kitchen is talented. It’s where, hopefully, modern Chinese food is headed. Flavors are clean and distinct, as in a broth of salty goose and lettuce stem or mild, pure white shrimp stir-fried with pickled jasmine buds. There’s some creativity, in using thin slices of white radish to wrap hawthorn for an appetizer, or presenting an excellent brown fried rice with abalone sauce on a lotus leaf – a luxe Dragon Boat festival dumpling. Other dishes are just plain good, like little parcels of strong, ground pork wrapped in pressed tofu and served warm in rich chicken stock. (Jasmine likes to wrap.) We can only guess at what goes on upstairs – diamond-studded Yangzhou fried rice, perhaps – but until our investment manager gets us there, Jasmine suits us just fine.