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Shanghai Travel Guide
Whore of the Orient and Paris of the East; city of quick riches, ill-gotten gains and fortunes lost; the domain of socialites and swindlers, adventurers and drug runners, missionaries, gangsters and pimps, all owing more to Marlene Dietrich than Mao Zedong – Shanghai has a history so impregnated with myth that it’s hard to decide whether is was once a paradise or an all-encompassing evil.
The foreign powers crashed the party in 1842 and in less than 100 years, Shanghai had swelled beyond its sensibilities and was cut short just as quickly by the communist revolution. It is this short century of Shanghai’s history that makes the city so appealing and appalling, and that has left monuments like bones to ponder over.
For Shanghai put away its dancing shoes in 1949 and the masses began shuffling to a different tune – the dour strains of Marxist-Leninism and the wail of the factory siren. Although these years of oblivion, the architects of the social experiment firmly wedged one foot against the door on Shanghai’s past, until the effort started to tell. Regarded with suspicion by the communists as a hotbed of Western imperialist influence, the city has for decades played second fiddle to Beijing.
Today the giant city of Shanghai has reawakened and the government is catching up at a breathtaking pace, pouring millions into the Pudong economic zone and creating a glass-and-steel skyline that rivals the Bund in a face-off between past and future. Shanghai is the world’s largest construction site, evolving at a pace so unmatched by any other Chinese city that even the morning ritual of flinging open one’s hotel curtains reveals new facets to the skyline. Catch the city’s historical charms while you still can – slabs of old Shanghai are vanishing almost overnight.
As the past is levelled, the future, it seems, is already here. The world’s tallest building is on the cards, Shanghai’s stylish hotels offer aromatherapy and fusion cuisine, the latest fashion trends hang in minimalist malls way beyond the reach of most mortals, and entrepreneurs check share prices on the Internet through their mobile phones. This is China for the 21st century, a century that will be dominated by China, with Shanghai at its driving edge. There’s no better place to get a taste of what the world, and indeed the rest of China, can expect from the resurgent People’s Republic.
For the visitor, Shanghai is China at its most recognizable and convenient. All the luxuries of China and all the comforts of home can be bought with a credit card. Hotel rooms, guides and train tickets can be booked in advance, and restaurants serve up everything from Indian curry to Tex-Mex.
Shanghai is foremost of a business city but there is still much of interest to capture the traveller’s imagination: the old-world architecture; the excellent shopping; and the excitement and energy of China’s most economically, ideologically and socially open city. Moreover, Shanghai is beginning to rival Beijing as China’s cultural capital. The Shanghai Museum, Art Museum and Grand Theatre rank among the best in Asia. If the synthetic delights of Shanghai start to pale, the classical Chinese cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou are just two of the many accessible places within an hour or two of the city.
Shanghai Today
Shanghai is a metropolis bubbling in what Man would call a stage of permanent revolution. As China's showcase city, it pulses with energy, continually morphing and mutating in a socialist-capitalist test tube, with projects and ideas exploding like oil in a hot wok. Epic public transportation systems seem to spring up overnight and green spaces appear out of the blue, testament to the can-do mentality of the Shanghainese. Long-term visitors will see the city visibly improving monthly before their very eyes.
If Shanghai believes in anything, it's modernity. The city is now peppered with super-chic fusion restaurants and minimalist bars, Asia's biggest malls, the world's first levitating train and soon the world's tallest building. The city's moneyed classes play golf, sip martinis, go skiing in the southern suburbs, bungee jump off the Shanghai Stadium and shop with a zeal that would make its past communist rulers turn in their graves.
Disposable income has created an endless wave of urban fads, from owning pets to downing shots of espresso. Drive around Shanghai and you can't miss the dozens of home improvement stores such as IKEA and B&Q, which cater to the growing numbers of people buying their own flats for the first time in three generations. The latest middle-class dream is to own a private car, an ambition that has Ford and Volkswagen drooling in their spreadsheets. Meanwhile, the accompanying mood of sexual openness has fuelled soaring divorce rates and an increasingly relaxed attitude to the city's gay community. These phenomena simply didn’t exist five years ago. Being in Shanghai is akin to viewing a sociological time-lapse camera on last play.
Yet for all its good looks. Shanghai lacks a certain substance; its government has created a skeleton but not yet a soul. In recent years the foreigners, the jazz, The architecture, the style and the buzz of 1930s Shanghai have all returned (along with the drugs, prostitution and corruption) but the era's creativeness, ingenuity and freedom of expression have yet to follow.
Ten consecutive years of double-digit annual economic growth have enriched many Shanghainese. The city's clubs are frequented by the dakuans, or new millionaires, joined by joint-venture office workers letting rip, bar girls in hot pants touting for business and Chinese clubbers experimenting with the ‘head-shaking drug’ (ecstasy). Prosperity has created a youth obsessed with self-fulfilment, be it through entertainment, shopping, drugs or relationships, giving them little in common with the politically troubled past of their parents. Partying, it seems, has become more important than politics.
Most worrying to the Chinese government is the expanding gulf between the haves and have-nots, a crisis in what is after all supposed to be an egalitarian society. In the 1990s Shanghai laid off over one million state workers. Joining these are over three million migrants from other provinces who work in the city on the fringes of Shanghai society, without insurance, medical cover, pensions, or unemployment or housing benefits. Migrants often find work on the city's 21,000 construction sites, sleeping in ultra basic dormitory accommodation, or in seedy areas of town like the train station, which are lined with barber-shop brothels. Still, the situation in economically booming Shanghai isn't anywhere near as serious as it is elsewhere in the country.
Ever since Shanghai's elite moved en masse to Hong Kong in 1949, rivalry has existed between the cities. Despite the hype and the breathtaking pace of development, Shanghai still has a long way to go to catch up with Hong Kong. However, thousands of overseas Chinese are returning to Shanghai every year to take advantage of the city's business opportunities, confirming the city as China's golden land of opportunity.
For Shanghai is imbued with a feeling of excitement and optimism. Buoyed up by the recent decision to host the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Shanghainese have increasing pride in their city, and with just cause. As the biggest city in the world's most populous country and with its fastest-growing economy, the city has once again managed to capture the world's imagination.
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