China » Introduction of Shanghai

Shanghai is the biggest city in the biggest country on Earth. Shanghai is China's capital of commerce, industry, and finance. It 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.

Shanghai 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. 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.