Shanghai

* Shanghai and Guangzhou are competing with each other to become the Emerald City of Oz in China with massive quantities of new Western style buildings of green reflective glass, many with the center cut out. Every once in awhile, someone gets daring and uses blue glass.


* Shanghai's skyline is constantly changing with over 1000 new skyscrapers built in the past 5 years alone (circa 1994). So many had been built the ground had begun to sink so rapidly that the city government had put a halt to approving new construction until it was all worked out.


* Someone said "Shanghai is the musuem of the world's architecture" and for 20th century architecture that is true. Check out the Museum of the City of Shanghai in the lower level of the Oriental Pearl Tower for detailed replicas of Shanghai's buildings in the early 1900's. It is an architectural treat.


* An architect is Shanghai disparaged the Pearl Tower, equating it to a Disney World structure. One only has to look at the top of Hong Kong's Victoria Peak to appreciate that all cities are better off with a Pearl Tower than what Hong Kong has.


* Of all Chinese cities, Shanghai on the Bund side is doing a good job of blending old and new, Western and Eastern. It is an exciting and charming city.