This week’s travel dream: Shanghai’s changing cityscape

last updated 8 January 2015

In Shanghai, you can “witness the old, the new, and the now” of China, said Andrea Sachs in The Washington Post. Seated near the mouth of the Yangtze River, the city was once a mere fishing village. But in 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing opened the port town to foreign trade, and changed the place forever. At once “ancient and modern,” Shanghai is today one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. “Pedestrians move with the force of an undertow,” and “futuristic-looking buildings materialize overnight” in this ever-changing, always moving metropolis. The restless city is quickening its pace in preparation for hosting Expo 2010, the world’s fair, which is expected to draw 70 million visitors over six months.

The city’s evolution is best illustrated on the Bund, the “scenic quay along the Huangpu River.” With a 360-degree view over the river, you’ll see both “19th-century neoclassic buildings once lorded over by Western traders and bankers” and Pudong, the “most recent district to spring from Shanghai’s soil.” It’s here that you can gawk at “multimillion-dollar skyscrapers that pierce the sky and a brocade of neon that outshines the constellations.” The most recent addition to the “Jetsonian skyline” is the Shanghai World Financial Center, the tallest structure in mainland China and the second tallest in the world.

Though the city’s transformation has “blurred the borders and fuzzied the characters” of its neighborhoods, some landmarks, such as Renmin Square, remain recognizable. “Time stands still” in Old Town, which sits quietly amid the hubbub. Its tight, narrow streets are lined with laundry “draped from lampposts, wires, and cornices” that often flutter like “ghostly figures dancing in the breeze.” On a nearby riverbank, older men and women practice tai chi, “their legs and arms moving slowly, as if they were swimming through glue.” They seem to be hardly aware of the “jackhammer pounding” from a nearby construction site—proof that the past thrives as Shanghai looks to the future.