Dateline: Shanghai, China. The first thing you must say about Shanghai is “wow” or perhaps “WOW” would be better. This place is enormous and growing like a weed: growing up, growing out, just growing. Shanghai’s zoomy buildings are zoomier than Hong Kong’s, their tall buildings are taller than Hong Kong’s, and that is saying something.
Shanghai has developed a middle class with education and money to spend. You can drive around Shanghai for hours and never get the sense that you are still in a developing country. In that sense Shanghai reminds me of Lima, Peru. Much of Lima feels “developed” but other parts of Peru (e.g., Iquitos, Ica) do not. I suspect that 100 miles outside Shanghai you’d see a very different China, one that is still clearly “developing,” our current PC synonym for poor.
Shanghai will host an international exhibition this year, beginning in a couple of months. They are doing a lot of cleaning up to show their best face. Some of it is truly “Potemkin village” stuff, putting pretty faces on ugly buildings. Other is more substantive, building a new pedestrian mall along the riverfront by the Bund.
Ironically, Shanghai’s most famous landmark was built by Europeans: the Shanghai Bund. It is a group of colonial-era riverfront buildings, some of which are quite beautiful. We entered a building that is now the Pudong Development Bank and was once a British bank, spectacular interior space with high vaulted ceilings, marble columns, huge brass lions flanking the doors, and beautiful mosaics. Sadly, we weren’t allowed to take pictures here.
Our guide was a friend from the States who does development here in Shanghai. It was a great one-day tour, thanks, Alan. He showed us the city and a project he was instrumental in making happen. Very impressive stuff. In his development we saw a hypermarket which is not unlike an indoor mall including supermarket and food court, except it is on several floors because land is expensive so you build up instead of out. It was drawing lots of customers, too. One day soon the other DrC will have Shanghai pix posted on her blog at http://cruztalking.blogspot.com and you will want to give it a look.
