Shanghai China

In an unrelated 'can thread I mentioned my travel to Shanghai and potter asked about pictures. My company maintains an office there and on occasion I get to go visit. I just came back from a trip Sep 8-15, and previously had gone in May of 2010 (during the Shanghai World Expo).

The photos below will be a selection of scenes from both trips, I got some more interesting shots the first time.


[Disclaimer, no hearths where harmed/involved in the making of this thread.]

2012 Trip...


First a note on Shanghai... The city itself is HUUUUUGE. The city is divided by the Huangpu river (which empties into the Yangtze). The central area of the city is divided into two zone the Puxi (west of river) which is the old city with all the interesting sights, touristy stuff, city government etc and the Pudong (east of river) taht is the corporate zone. I was mostly in Pudong.

First some not so exciting scenes from the hotel and office.



View from my hotel room at the Marriot in downtown Pudong. If you look closely in the distance you can see the Oriental Pearl Tower and the World financial center (aka "the can opener")




And similarly here is the view from my office of the river front. That building is the Mandarin Oriental hotel. My company owns 5 floors in a 50 story tower called the One Lujiazui building.

The Pudong region is one of China's special economic zones. The entire are was built from nothing in 15 years or so and the centerpiece is the Lujiazui area - a green space surrounded by a ring road and massive buildings. The largest are in the photo below


The "Pagoda" is the Jin Mao tower. Its 88 stories tall, for a long time was the largest building in Shanghai and was home to the worlds highest hotel. The Grand Hyatt Shanghai occupies the top 30 floors.

The "bottle opener" is the Shanghai world Financial Center. its 101 stories tall, built by the Japanese. Again to one up the Jin Mao another Hyatt hotel was opened at the top. Supposedly the shape of the building was to resemble a Katana samurai sword but it looks more like a church key to me...

The building in the background is a new mega tower under construction by a Chinese firm to be even taller. They don't want Japan to get away with the biggest building in town.

The building that Shanghai is really famous for is the Oriental Pearl Tower. I think its over 1800ft, there is an observation deck and the top is all TV and radio transmitters.

Here is yours truly at the base hanging out wwith our local office manager. There is a history museum, pedestrian area, hotels and a massive shopping mall called the "Super Brand" at the base.

Not much siteseeing on this trip, but I did get out to the shopping street Nanjing Dong Lu

Shanghai 2010


I did a lot more sightseeing when I visited in 2010

The "Bund" (riverfront) at night...

2010

The Yu Garden

2010

Pudong at night

2010

The park in the center of Lujiazui has a pavillion charting the commercial development of the area




Our building, on a no smog day

2010

One fun pastime is to go out to eat in all the top floor restaurants around town. The dish was not as spicy as it looks...

2010

People's Square and the Shanghai Museum

2010

Highlight of the trip was a visit to the world Expo. Attendance was over 400,000 on the day I was there, wait times for most of the pavilions were 2-6 hours so we mostly just walked around.

More Expo

2010

And of course Nanjing Dong Lu again

And the best way to travel back to the airport... Maglev train




The Shanghai Maglev demonstration line is a 30km (18mi) mile connector that runs from the airport to one of the subway terminals near the financial zone. Designed by Siemens and capable of reaching a top speed of 268mph and doing the run to the airport in under 7 minutes. They only allow full speed at certain limited times per day due to noise issues however and when I rode it we only hit 180.

There were plans at one point to connect this thing all the way to Beijing but I believe that's been scrapped. Not many people ride it.

I understand the feeling Scotty, when it comes to the city I'm a visit but wouldn't want to live their kinda guy. Wife and I dream of retiring on an old colonial farm in VT or such.

Sounds like we have some very well traveled hearth'ers. Potter, Fossil - sounds like you guys have seen a lot. Ive only had the pleasure to travel over there 4 times (all on works dime - 2x Shanghai, 2x India).

I definitely found that the people I interacted with lead much more similar lives to us than many Americans would suspect. Same hopes and dreams, same mundane issues of everyday life. But OTOH most of the folks I dealt with are middle class technical professionals, life for the large populations in poverty over there is a different story.

Speaking of which that's one big difference I see between China and India. In India the poverty is everywhere - you might have a shanty town right next to a modern office tower and the roads and shared infrastructure are a mess; whereas in China there are modern rich areas well separated from the poor areas.