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If you simply count heads, Shànghai is the biggest city in the biggest
country on Earth. If you simply scan statistics, this is China's capital
of commerce, industry, and finance. But numbers don't tell the whole
story. Shànghai has a colonial past more intense than that of any other
city in China, save Hong Kong, and this legacy gives it a dramatic
character, visible in the very facades of its buildings. But the city is
not only a museum of East meeting West on Chinese soil. Overnight,
Shànghai has become one of the world's great modern capitals, the one city
that best shows where China is headed at the dawn of the 21st century.
Shànghai was not always much of a delight to tour, but that has changed.
After the building boom of the 1990s tore the city apart, new roads,
highways, tunnels, and bridges, not to mention new hotels, restaurants, and
sights now make Shànghai a city that a visitor can once again comfortably
enjoy and explore. Today there are large neighborhoods of foreign
architecture, wonderful for a stroll, where Europeans, especially the
French, once resided. Shànghai's great river of commerce, the Huángpu, a
tributary of the mighty Yángzi River, is lined with a gallery of colonial
architecture, known as the Bund, grander than any other in the East, much
of it recently refurbished and beckoning the curious visitor. The
mansions, garden estates, country clubs, and cathedrals of Westerners who
made their fortunes here a century ago pepper the city. Even a synagogue
exists, dating from the days of an unparalleled Jewish immigration to
China. These are not the typical monuments of China, but they are typical
of Shànghai.
At the same time, creations of a strictly Chinese culture prevail. A walk
through the chaotic old Chinese city turns up traditional treasures: a
teahouse epitomizing old China; a quintessential Southern-Chinese classical
garden; active temples and ancient pagodas; and even a section of
Shànghai's old city wall. If Shànghai's primary architecture and avenues
recall 19th-century Europe rather than old Cathay, this is still a Chinese
city to the core.
Shànghai is a haven for shoppers - Nánjing Lù is the number-one shopping
street in all of China - but perhaps even more importantly, Shànghai
represents the future of China. Across the mighty Huángpu River, which
served as old Shànghai's eastern border, Pudong, serving as the face of new
Shànghai, now boasts the tallest hotel in the world, Asia's largest
shopping mall, China's largest stock exchange, and one of the highest
observation decks in Asia, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. New Shanghai also
boasts the world's first maglev train system that ferries passengers
between the central business district and the Pudong International Airport.
Reaching speeds of more than 400 kph, taking the train to or from the
airport can be a highlight of any visitor's trip. Not to be outdone, old
Shànghai has its own legions of new skyscrapers, too, and a booming
collection of fine international restaurants, several of them taking over
the rooftops of the colonial gems lining the Bund and the mansions that
went to seed in Shànghai's French Quarter.
Shànghai is also reestablishing itself as a leading trendsetter for
fashion, design, culture, and the arts. New theaters and cultural centers
attract top performers from China and abroad, while designers of every
stripe are taking advantage of the mix of the East, West, past, and future
by blazing their own unique styles.
Copyright © 2000-2006, Wiley Publishing, Inc. for Frommer's®
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