 | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  |
Products
Products
Website : www.tj-travel.com
|
|
|
| | | | | | | | | | |
| Copyright 2007 T&J Travel and Tours All rights reserved |
Shanghai Holiday Package,Shanghai
Vacation Package,Shanghai Discounted
Package,Shanghai Lowest Tour Package
Vacation Package,Shanghai Discounted
Package,Shanghai Lowest Tour Package
Inclusions : Hotel accomodation Free daily Breakfast outside hotel Free city tour with lunch Free round-tripairport shuttle with one luggage |
Shanghai
After forty years of stagnation, the great metropolis of SHANGHAI is currently undergoing one of the fastest
economic expansions that the world has ever seen. While shops overflow and the skyline fills with skyscrapers,
Shanghai now seems certain to recapture its position as East Asia's leading business city, a status it last held
before World War II. And yet, for all the modernization Shanghai has retained deep links with its colonial past.
Shanghai is still known in the West for its infamous role as the base of European imperialism in mainland China
– its decadence, illicit pleasures, racism, appalling social inequalities, and Mafia syndicates. The intervening fifty
years have almost been forgotten, as though the period from when the Communists arrived and the foreigners
moved out was an era in which nothing happened. To some extent this perception is actually true: for most of
the Communist period into the early 1990s, the central government in Beijing deliberately ran Shanghai down,
siphoning off its surplus to other parts of the country to the point where the city came to resemble a living
museum, frozen in time since the 1940s, and housing the largest array of Art Deco architecture in the world.
Yet the Shanghainese never lost their ability to make waves for themselves and, in recent years, China's central
government has come to be dominated by individuals from the Shanghai area, who look with favour on the
rebuilding of their old metropolis. In the mid 1980s, the decision was made to push Shanghai once again to the
forefront of China's drive for modernization, and an explosion of economic activity has been unleashed. In the
last two decades, city planners have been busy creating a subway network, colossal highways, flyovers and
bridges, shopping malls, hotel complexes and the beginnings of a "New Bund" – the Special Economic Zone
across the river in Pudong, soon to be crowned with the world's tallest building. Significantly, China's main
money-printing mint is near here, hence the high proportion of shiny new coins and bills in circulation in the
city. The Shanghainese are by far the most highly skilled labour force in the country, renowned for their ability
to combine style and sophistication with a sharp sense for business, and international in outlook. Thanks to
them their city is riding high.
Not that the old Shanghai is set to disappear overnight. Although the pace of redevelopment has quickened,
parts of the city still resemble a 1920s vision of the future; a grimy metropolis of monolithic pseudo-classical
facades, threaded with overhead cables and walkways, and choked by vast crowds and rattling trolley buses.
Unlike other major Chinese cities, Shanghai has only recently been subjected to large-scale rebuilding. Most of
the urban area was partitioned between foreign powers until 1949, and their former embassies, banks and official
residences still give large areas of Shanghai an early-twentieth-century European flavour that the odd Soviet-
inspired government building cannot overshadow. It is still possible to make out the boundaries of what used to
be the foreign concessions, with the bewildering tangle of alleyways of the old Chinese city at its heart. Only
along the Huangpu waterfront, amid the stolid grandeur of the Bund, is there some sense of space – and here
you feel the past more strongly than ever, its outward forms, shabby and battered, still very much a working
part of the city. Today, strolling the Bund is a required attraction for any visitor to Shanghai, and it's ironic that
relics of hated foreign imperialism such as the Bund are now protected as city monuments.
Like Hong Kong, its model of economic development, Shanghai does not brim with obvious attractions to see.
Besides the Shanghai Museum, the Suzhou-reminiscent Yu Yuan Gardens, and the Huangpu River Cruise, there
are few sights with broad appeal – many travellers leave the city with a sense of letdown. But the beauty of
visiting Shanghai lies not so much in scurrying from attraction to attraction, but in less obvious pleasures:
strolling the Bund, exploring the pockets of colonial architecture in the old French Concession, sampling the
exploding restaurant and nightlife scene, or wandering the shopping streets and absorbing the rebirth of one of
the world's great cities.
Inevitably, many of the social ills that the Communists were supposed to have eliminated after 1949 are making
a comeback. Unemployment, drug abuse and prostitution are rife. But the dynamic contrast that Shanghai
presents with the rest of China is one that even the most China-weary of travellers can hardly fail to enjoy.
Information by Rough Guides
economic expansions that the world has ever seen. While shops overflow and the skyline fills with skyscrapers,
Shanghai now seems certain to recapture its position as East Asia's leading business city, a status it last held
before World War II. And yet, for all the modernization Shanghai has retained deep links with its colonial past.
Shanghai is still known in the West for its infamous role as the base of European imperialism in mainland China
– its decadence, illicit pleasures, racism, appalling social inequalities, and Mafia syndicates. The intervening fifty
years have almost been forgotten, as though the period from when the Communists arrived and the foreigners
moved out was an era in which nothing happened. To some extent this perception is actually true: for most of
the Communist period into the early 1990s, the central government in Beijing deliberately ran Shanghai down,
siphoning off its surplus to other parts of the country to the point where the city came to resemble a living
museum, frozen in time since the 1940s, and housing the largest array of Art Deco architecture in the world.
Yet the Shanghainese never lost their ability to make waves for themselves and, in recent years, China's central
government has come to be dominated by individuals from the Shanghai area, who look with favour on the
rebuilding of their old metropolis. In the mid 1980s, the decision was made to push Shanghai once again to the
forefront of China's drive for modernization, and an explosion of economic activity has been unleashed. In the
last two decades, city planners have been busy creating a subway network, colossal highways, flyovers and
bridges, shopping malls, hotel complexes and the beginnings of a "New Bund" – the Special Economic Zone
across the river in Pudong, soon to be crowned with the world's tallest building. Significantly, China's main
money-printing mint is near here, hence the high proportion of shiny new coins and bills in circulation in the
city. The Shanghainese are by far the most highly skilled labour force in the country, renowned for their ability
to combine style and sophistication with a sharp sense for business, and international in outlook. Thanks to
them their city is riding high.
Not that the old Shanghai is set to disappear overnight. Although the pace of redevelopment has quickened,
parts of the city still resemble a 1920s vision of the future; a grimy metropolis of monolithic pseudo-classical
facades, threaded with overhead cables and walkways, and choked by vast crowds and rattling trolley buses.
Unlike other major Chinese cities, Shanghai has only recently been subjected to large-scale rebuilding. Most of
the urban area was partitioned between foreign powers until 1949, and their former embassies, banks and official
residences still give large areas of Shanghai an early-twentieth-century European flavour that the odd Soviet-
inspired government building cannot overshadow. It is still possible to make out the boundaries of what used to
be the foreign concessions, with the bewildering tangle of alleyways of the old Chinese city at its heart. Only
along the Huangpu waterfront, amid the stolid grandeur of the Bund, is there some sense of space – and here
you feel the past more strongly than ever, its outward forms, shabby and battered, still very much a working
part of the city. Today, strolling the Bund is a required attraction for any visitor to Shanghai, and it's ironic that
relics of hated foreign imperialism such as the Bund are now protected as city monuments.
Like Hong Kong, its model of economic development, Shanghai does not brim with obvious attractions to see.
Besides the Shanghai Museum, the Suzhou-reminiscent Yu Yuan Gardens, and the Huangpu River Cruise, there
are few sights with broad appeal – many travellers leave the city with a sense of letdown. But the beauty of
visiting Shanghai lies not so much in scurrying from attraction to attraction, but in less obvious pleasures:
strolling the Bund, exploring the pockets of colonial architecture in the old French Concession, sampling the
exploding restaurant and nightlife scene, or wandering the shopping streets and absorbing the rebirth of one of
the world's great cities.
Inevitably, many of the social ills that the Communists were supposed to have eliminated after 1949 are making
a comeback. Unemployment, drug abuse and prostitution are rife. But the dynamic contrast that Shanghai
presents with the rest of China is one that even the most China-weary of travellers can hardly fail to enjoy.
Information by Rough Guides
|