china-10-shanghai_v1_m56577569830510994.pdfVIP

© Lonely Planet Publications 237 Shànghǎi 上海 Whore of the Orient, Paris of the East; city of quick riches, ill-gotten gains and fortunes lost on the tumble of dice; the domain of adventurers, swindlers, gamblers, drugrunners, tycoons, missionaries, gangsters and backstreet pimps; the city that plots insurrection and dances as the revolution shoots its way into town – Shànghǎi was a dark memory during the long years of forgetting that the Communists visited upon their new China. After decades going to seed, Shànghǎi’s spectacular reversal and alchemic transformation has made it the talk of the town. No other city in China has reversed its decline with such acumen. Somehow managing to typify modern China while being quite unlike anywhere else in the country, Shànghǎi has in the process become an oft-quipped byword for excess, style and full-on construction. A largely modern upstart, Shànghǎi today compensates for its youthful pedigree with a new-found panache and sense of certainty. As such, Shànghǎi is – like Hong Kong – a city best seen as a prologue or epilogue to your China experience. Shànghǎi is real China, but perhaps just not the real China you were after. For visitors, the city can hardly match the epic history of Běijīng or Xī‘ān. Yet Shànghǎi has a unique story to tell and no other Chinese city does foreign concession streetscapes in quite the same way. The Bund, French Concession and the Shanghai Museum are incomparable top sights that cannot be missed. And you can at least warm to the growing acres of