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Shanghai, China
If I stay here, trouble will find me
My first stop and my last stop in China was Shanghai, where the future is now. Here from the pedestrian promenade at the Bund, across the (really quite dirty) Huangpu River, where full cargo ships head to the sea and empty ones return, is the skyline of Pudong, where impressive towers stand side by side with non impressive towers and (for once) the smog kind of cleared up a little.
Compared to Beijing, the subway system in Shanghai isn’t that bad. You might get some occasional shoving, but it’s not the fight to the death that every train and every stop was in Beijing. And if you just wanted to go back and forth across the river, there’s even a fun (and more expensive) option. The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel consists of a two stop line under the river, with little tiny shuttles and lots of fun lights to keep you distracted on the three minute ride.
When you walk through the elevated sidewalks of an all too futuristic Shanghai you get the feeling that you might actually be inside the Matrix. At any second I expected to see Keanu Reeves jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Not a comforting image when you really start to think about it.
From those elevated sidewalks, this is the view looking up at the three monstrous super tall skyscrapers that anchor the center of Pudong, all right across the street from each other. In the middle is the already mentioned 1,380 foot high Jin Mao Tower designed by Adrian Smith of (then) SOM. On the left is the taller 1,614 foot high Shanghai World Financial Center designed by Bill Pederson at KPF, all lit up for the night time. On the right, disappearing into the fog and still under construction is the 2,073 foot high Shanghai Tower designed by Gensler.
A look down at some of those elevated sidewalks. I have mixed feelings about these walkways. Sure, they're convenient, no traffic lights, no messy crosswalks, no chance of getting hit by a bus, but they also have an unsettling, tomorrowland type vibe when you're on them, almost as if you're a vehicle and not a person. Plus not a single Keanu Reeves sighting anywhere, despite all that talk about the Matrix. I guess Neo it's true, that sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
There are a lot of impressive (and non impressive) towers in Shanghai and in Pudong, and while the Skyscraper City advertisements make the towers look super friendly, in reality, things were a little less colorful and a little more real.
Shanghai is most definitely not Beijing. For one thing it's more expensive than Beijing, although that might not be a fair comparison since everything is insanely cheap in Beijing. The people in Shanghai still push but somehow it's not as bad. After four nights in Beijing, it was nice to be somewhere different.
In Shanghai, I decided to stay at the Grand Hyatt in the top half of the Jin Mao Tower. My room was on the 73rd floor with a dead on view of the taller World Financial Center and (in this picture) a morning view that stretched north along the river and over the city.
The Grand Hyatt is located in the upper/middle of the Jin Mao Tower, with its lobby on the 53rd floor and then a dizzying atrium (and hotel rooms) extending up to the 87th floor. My room was on the 73rd floor (which was nice) and the view of the city (and the other towers) through the haze was easily worth whatever extra the room ended up costing.
A lot of the things to do in Shanghai involve looking at itself. The Bund is just an opportunity to look at Pudong, and observation decks at the towers are just opportunities to look at the other towers you were just in. Still, some of the observation decks were really fun, like this one in the Shanghai World Financial Center, located at the top of the keyhole opening and complete with a reflective ceiling and a glass floor.
A close up construction photo of the uncreatively named Shanghai Tower from the observation deck at the Jin Mao Tower, 15 stories above my hotel room and 88 stories above the street.
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is that giant pointy thing with the giant pink spheres right on the water that seems to push its way past all of the new, more interesting towers in Pudong. Other than broadcasting state run propaganda television signals, it also has observation deck after observation deck after observation deck (five in all), each offering an idealized view of an alternate universe Shanghai that doesn't have an Oriental Pearl TV Tower in the middle of it. This is a rare photo from the TV Tower where you can look back and see the TV Tower itself right through the scratched up glass floor, which also offers a brief, wonderful chance to float high above all of those tourists heading in and getting in line to see exactly what you're seeing now.
