| China Destination Guide: Shanghai |
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Main Tour Attractions in
Shanghai
Pudong
Pudong means “east of the Huangpu River.” As late as the 1980s, there was little more than rice paddies and muddy wasteland in this outlying area of Shanghai. Since then, Pudong has emerged as the most dynamic district of China’s largest city, featuring gleaming skyscrapers, broad avenues, a riverside promenade, beautiful lawns and open spaces, upscale shops and residential communities and state-of-art cultural facilities.
Lujiazuui, the corner of Pudong situated across the Huangpu from the Bund, is Shanghai’s new financial center. A landmark building that dominates the area and indeed the whole city is the Pearl of Orient, a TV tower that also provides a high-rise viewing platform for tourists. At the height of 468 meters (1,535 ft), the tower is the third tallest tower in the world, and its viewing platform is 263 meters or 863 feet above ground.
A short distance away from Pearl of Orient there stands the Jinmao Building, an office and hotel building. It is 420-meter (1,380 ft) in height, and houses Shanghai Grand Hyatt Hotel. The 88th floor of the building is the Skywalk, which, measuring 16,361 square feet, can hold a thousand people simultaneously.
Shanghai’s new airport, Pudong International Airport is located on the coast, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from downtown Shanghai. One means of transportation to get to the airport is by the Maglev. Hovering half an inch above its guide-ways, the hi-tech train travels at a high speed of 430 kilometers (267 miles) per hour, which makes it a tour attraction in itself.
The Bund
Westerners know it as the Bund and Chinese call it Waitan. The word “Bund” is an Anglo-Hindi word for “embankment,” which in this case refers to the embankment on the western bank of the Huangpu River in central Shanghai. The Chinese term Waitan means “outlying muddy land.” This arose from the fact that back in the 19th century the land in question was but a piece of open land south of the small, walled town of Shanghai. Great Britain, after defeating China in the Opium War of 1840, secured this area as a British settlement, and Western companies and banks soon made their base here, quickly building the area up as the economic center of China. It was China’s Wall Street then and during its heydays over 180 financial institutions could be found on this relatively short stretch of land (1.5 kilometer, or about one mile, in length). Today dozens of stately Western buildings still line the street here, testifying to the colonial past of the area. Appearing in a wide range of styles, these buildings together make an impressive historical and architectural museum in the open. The Customs Building was constructed in 1927, and its trademark clock was built in England in imitation of the Big Ben. The HSBC Buiding used to be the headquarters of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation; after the Communist victory in 1949 it was occupied by the Shanghai Municipal Government, and was vacated only recently to be used by another bank, Pudong Development Bank, which played an important role in developing the land across the river from the Bund, Pudong New District. Among other notable colonial-era buildings on the Bund are the former British Consulate and Peace Hotel (formerly the Cathay Hotel and Sassoon House – the Sassoon family that made much of its fortune in the opium trade).
Yu Garden and City God Temple
Yu Garden and City God Temple date back to the time when Shanghai was still just a small, quiet, walled county town, long before its rise to be a major metropolis in East Asia. The garden was originally built in 1559, by a retired official in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), aimed to entertain the official’s aging parents (the world “Yu” has a meaning of “to entertain, to make happy”). Occupying five acres of land, the garden features over 40 attractions of various type – halls, pavilions, corridors, streams, etc. – which together well illustrate traditional Chinese architects creative use of space.
Shanghai City God Temple, which is a short distance away from Yu Garden, was initially constructed in 1403. Traditionally Chinese believed that prosperity and peace in a given local area is protected by particular deities, and they built their respective shrines to honor these guardians. In the case of old Shanghai, the guardians were two deified historical figures, one being a brave general from the West Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D 9), and the other an just and upright scholar-official from early Ming Dynasty.
In the old days, the area around a city god temple also serves as a market, where local residents would go to doing their purchases and partake in public events and entertainment. This tradition has been kept alive in the vicinity of the Shanghai city god temple where tourists and visitors are greeted with numerous small shops and food stalls.
The general area in which Yu Garden and City God Temple are located is nowadays enclosed by two roads, Renmin Road and Zhonghua Road. These roads are where Shanghai’s old city wall used to stand. The perimeter is just 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles), indicating that compared to Shanghai now, old Shanghai was a small town indeed. The wall was torn down in 1912, to make way for the rapid growth of Shanghai. Today travelers can still see a small section of the city wall. Known as Dajing Ge (Great Domain Tower), the structure is located at the cross of Renmin Road and Dajing Road.
Nanjing Road
Nanjing Road is the prime shopping street of Shanghai. It came into being in the middle of the 19th century when Shanghai began to rise as China’s leading trade port. The street begins at the Bund on the western bank of the Huangpu River and extends westward till it reaches the thousand-year old Jingan Temple. The whole street is 5.5 kilometers in length and traverses through the busiest commercial district of Shanghai. Historically this was where top department stores of Shanghai were located, and today, even though other shopping centers have mushroomed all across Shanghai, Nanjing Road maintains it dominant position due to its perfect location and by offering a great variety of stores – many of them long-standing establishments with excellent reputation. In 1999 the eastern section of Nanjing Road was made to be pedestrians-only so that shoppers do not have to worry about traffic as they stroll down the street. This has further increased the popularity of Nanjing Road; now over one million people visit the street on a given day.
Shanghai Museum
Shanghai Museum has one of the best collections of historical artifacts and art works in China. Founded in 1952, the museum was moved to the current location – on the southen side of the People’s Square - in 1995. The new building, a round structure sitting on top of a square foundation, with an arch linking the two vertically, symbolizes the traditional Chinese belief that heaven is round and earth is square and the idea that heaven, man, and earth naturally exist in harmony.
There are 12 exhibition halls in the museum, distributed on four floors. Displayed on the first floor are bronze artifacts that date back as early as the 18th century B.C. Along with them are sculptural works from ancient China, the most notable of which are Buddhist statues and images from the time when Buddhism first arrived in China. On the second floor one finds 8,000 years of ceramic art in China, from pottery of the Neolithic age to Ming and Qing porcelain specifically produced for the use of the imperial courts then. The third floor of the museum presents previous paintings, calligraphic works, and seals representative of various ages in China’s past. The exhibition on the fourth floor feature traditional Chinese furniture, minority peoples’ clothing and handicrafts, Chinese coins, and jade sculpture. A visit to Shanghai Museum is a great way for a tourist to form an overview of the remarkable cultural and artistic accomplishments of the Chinese people.
Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall
The rapid growth of Shanghai from a quiet small town to one of the world’s largest and most robust cities in one and a half century is a fascinating story. One convenient way to get to know the story is to pay a visit to the recently opened Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. The facility occupies the southeastern corner of the People’s Square and is of a shape said to be derived from the traditional Chinese city-wall gate. On the bottom floor of the exhibition hall one is given an opportunity to observe life in Shanghai during the 1930s. The upper floors are used to showcase the development of Shanghai in the past 50 years as well as highlights of what is going to happen to Shanghai in the coming 20 years. The exhibition utilizes a wide range of multi-media technology and does a wonderful job overall in making a captivating presentation of Shanghai’s past, present and future.
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