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e-travel-to Shanghai
Fast Facts
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After forty years of stagnation, the great metropolis of SHANGHAI is
currently undergoing one of the fastest economic expansions that the world
has ever seen. While shops overflow and the skyline fills with skyscrapers,
Shanghai now seems certain, sometime in the twenty-first century, to
recapture its position as East Asia's leading business city, a status it
last held before World War II. And yet, for all the modernization in terms
of infrastructure, lifestyle and availability of consumer goods, Shanghai at
the turn of the millennium is nonetheless a city inextricably linked with
its colonial past .
Shanghai is still mainly known in the West for its infamous role as the base of European imperialism in mainland China - its decadence, illicit pleasures, racism, appalling social inequalities, and Mafia syndicates. The intervening fifty years have almost been forgotten, as though the period from when the Communists arrived and the foreigners moved out was an era in which nothing happened. To some extent this perception is actually true: for most of the Communist period into the early 1990s, the central government in Beijing deliberately ran Shanghai down, siphoning off its surplus to other parts of the country to the point where the city came to resemble a living museum, frozen in time since the 1940s, and housing the largest array of Art-Deco architecture in the world. |
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Yet the Shanghainese never lost their ability to make waves for
themselves, and, in recent years, China's central government has come to be
dominated by individuals from the Shanghai area, who look with favour on the
rebuilding of their old metropolis. In the mid 1980s, the decision was made
to push Shanghai once again to the forefront of China's drive for
modernization , and an explosion of economic activity has been unleashed. In
this last decade, city planners have been busy creating a subway network,
colossal highways, flyovers and bridges, shopping malls, hotel complexes and
the beginnings of a "New Bund" - the Special Economic Zone across the river
in Pudong, soon to be crowned with the world's tallest building .
Symbolically, the central government recently constructed China's main
money-printing mint near here, a move reflected in the high proportion of
shiny new coins and bills in circulation in the city. With by far the most
highly skilled labour force in the country, the long-suppressed Shanghai
ability to combine style and sophistication with a sharp sense for business
is once again riding high.
Not that the old Shanghai is set to disappear overnight. Although the pace of redevelopment has quickened in the past several years, the city still, in large parts, resembles a 1920s vision of the future; a grimy metropolis of monolithic pseudo-classical facades, threaded with overhead cables and walkways, bursting with the noise of rattling trolley buses and choked by vast crowds of purposefully scurrying pedestrians. Unlike other major Chinese cities, Shanghai has only recently been subjected to large-scale rebuilding. Most of the urban area was partitioned between foreign powers until 1949, and their former embassies, banks and official residences still give large areas of Shanghai an early-century European flavour that the odd Soviet-inspired government building cannot overshadow. It is still possible to make out the boundaries of what used to be the foreign concessions, with the bewildering tangle of overhanging alleyways of the old Chinese city at its heart. Only along the Huangpu waterfront, amid the solid grandeur of the Bund, is there some sense of space - and here you feel the past more strongly than ever, its outward forms, shabby and battered, still very much a working part of the city. Today, strolling the Bund is a requisite attraction for any visitor to Shanghai, and it's an intriguing irony that relics of hated foreign imperialism such as the Bund are now proudly protected by the Shanghainese as city monuments. Like Hong Kong, its model of economic development, Shanghai does not brim with obvious attractions to see. Besides the Shanghai Museum, the Suzhou-reminiscent Yu Yuan Gardens, and the Huangpu River Cruise, there are few sights with broad appeal - many travellers leave the city with a sense of letdown. But the beauty of visiting Shanghai lies not so much in scurrying from attraction to attraction, but in less obvious pleasures: strolling along the Bund, exploring the pockets of colonial architecture in the old French Concession, sampling the rapidly maturing restaurant and nightlife scene (already in a league with Hong Kong, some feel), or in wandering the main shopping streets and absorbing the explosive rebirth of energy of one of the world's great cities. Inevitably, many of the social ills that the Communists were supposed to have eliminated after 1949 are making a comeback as well. Unemployment, drug abuse and prostitution are rife. But the dynamic contrast that Shanghai presents with the rest of China is one that even the most China-weary of travellers will hardly fail to enjoy. |
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Although most parts of Shanghai that you are likely to visit lie to the
west of the Huangpu River and its classic colonial riverfront, the
Bund , by far the most easily recognizable landmark in the city is
the rocket-like Oriental Pearl TV Tower on the east side, in the Pudong
Special Economic Zone. The best way to check out both banks of the Huangpu
River and their sights is to take the splendid Huangpu River Tour .
Nanjing Lu , reputedly the busiest shopping street in China, runs through the heart of downtown Shanghai headed at its eastern end by the famous Peace Hotel and leading west to Renmin Park , which today houses Shanghai's excellent new Museum . Shanghai's other main sights lie about 1.5km south of Nanjing Lu in the Old City , the longest continuously inhabited part of the city, with a fully restored classical Chinese garden, the Yu Yuan , neighbouring bazaars and the traditional Huxinting Tea House at its heart. To the southwest of here lies the marvellous old French Concession , with its cosmopolitan cooking traditions, European-style housing and revolutionary relics. The energetic eating and nightlife centre of Shanghai, Huaihai Lu , serves as the area's main artery. Farther out from the centre remains a scattering of sights. North of Suzhou Creek is the interesting Hongkou Park , with its monuments to the great twentieth-century writer, Lu Xun. Finally, in the far west are two of Shanghai's most important surviving religious sites, the Longhua Si and the Yufo Si . |
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