Expats, particularly in Shanghai, are prone to being swept away by the deluge of breathless accolades (‘breakneck growth’, ‘Pearl of the Orient’, ‘future superpower’ and all the rest of it) that riddle discourses on China, and consequently kid themselves into believing that they are here for any other reason than to get away from whatever ailed them back in the West.

The truth is, life for the overwhelming majority of China expats is a sublime form of therapeutic self-exile, a shirking of whatever unpalatable challenges they faced back home for a Never Never Land existence of eating out every night, cheap massages and having your (sizable) apartment cleaned by a servant.

The comical amateurism of Leila Qattan punctures the illusion that the expat bubble is anything but a fluffy Lala Land of delayed responsibility and over-entitlement. Professionalism is not to be expected in such an exquisitely absurd environment. Therefore I cannot be doing with the sanctimonious outrage of the City Weekend users. Leila Qattan’s crime is not so much to have peddled nonsense, but to have shattered their illusion that living in China is a perfectly legitimate alternative to having a proper life in the West. They should face it and embrace it: that lack of substance is precisely why we’re here.