* SHANGHAI * 上海

Shanghai has lots of great parks. It's 'answer' to central park though is century park in Pudong which is new and very big, but nowhere near as nice as the many in Puxi.
Even the small parks in Shanghai often feel large due to the way they are broken up into little areas with distinct views. You can get lost in the park in people's square and it's barely a couple hundred metres across...

wow!

I think it would be a good idea to turn the Expo grounds into a park after the Expo is over. The area being used for it is actually larger than Central Park.

I love China and Shanghai especially. I do remeber as I saw pictures of this city in a book printed somewhere 1970 long long time ago. I thought back then- my word, and this is the 20th century-so miserable the city looked like back then. Just 40 years have passed and everything has changed. Now it one of the most impressive cities in the world.

I do believe that Shanghai has become too tall and too dense. A few tall buildings here ard there are good, but when you have them all over the place they do become a little overbearing. I don't disagree with the opinions that old houses are not nice to live in, but new developments should inherit some of the traditional styles, or at least be a bit more creative for goodness' sake. 'Housing shortages' has been bandited about as the reason for this ultra-high density (much denser than Tokyo incidentally) but I suspect an over-inflated housing market - there needs to be a much better managed social housing programme that discourages one household owning multiple properties (quite common in Shanghai I feel).

very dense

summer guy said:

Click to expand...

Can someone please tell me

A) where is that starbucks and where is the coffee / restaurant

^^ from the picture, it should be located at the riverside in Pudong, opposite to the Bund, at the backside of the Super Brand Mall.

btw, McDonanld's should buy the last picture for their advertisement purpose

big-dog said:

^^ from the picture, it should be located at the riverside in Pudong, opposite to the Bund, at the backside of the Super Brand Mall.

btw, McDonanld's should buy the last picture for their advertisement purpose

Click to expand...

Thanks.

Oh and also, too many Latin letters and foreign names - where's China's own stuff?

NCT said:

Oh and also, too many Latin letters and foreign names - where's China's own stuff?

Click to expand...

Its called globalisation and open market. Different streets will have different stuff Nanjing road has all the Chinese stuff you can find.

Shanghai (from the viewpoint of a tourist) is very small.

There is Puxi with the Nanjing-Road, Pudong, the old town with the garden (forgot the name) and 新天地. Did I forget something?

The Skyline of Pudong is very impressive, but the rest just so so. Too dirty.

Hope this city will improve quickly. To be fair, at the moment the city is under construction because of the Expo next year.

I heard when raining, there are flood on some of Shanghai streets. Is Shanghai local government planning for sewer system in the future? I never heard or read the news about China sewer mega projects.

They are probably re-doing all the flood systems in Shanghai for the Expo. Right now, you cant walk one block on the sidewalk without running into construction. They are resurfacing almost every sidewalk and/or burying power lines. Its actually kind of annoying because there is dirt everywhere. I was in Beijing during the buildup for the olympics and I am in Shanghai for the build up for the expo, and I can say that there is much more renovation going on in Shanghai than there was in Beijing in 2008

no1gizmo said:

Shanghai (from the viewpoint of a tourist) is very small.

There is Puxi with the Nanjing-Road, Pudong, the old town with the garden (forgot the name) and 新天地. Did I forget something?

The Skyline of Pudong is very impressive, but the rest just so so. Too dirty.

Hope this city will improve quickly. To be fair, at the moment the city is under construction because of the Expo next year.

Click to expand...

You got to be one lazy tourist! Get up off your arse and go take a stroll around the tree-lined streets in the French concession. Or check out some of the many central Shanghai parks. Or wander off into the back streets around the old town and find one of the myriad markets. Or track down some of the best art deco anywhere. Or find a tea shop/restaurant/bar/whatever near the river and watch the thousands of boats and ships stream by...

Or just stop and look a bit closer at all the noise and the dirt. It's actually Shanghai's best bit - a crazy, chaotic, lively, bustling mix of East and West, old and new, and like nowhere else in the world.

Shanghai hasn't got much for the tourist who thinks touring is all about dead buildings, buying tickets, flashy rides and everything-we-got-at-home-only-a-bit-more-ethnic ... but hey, it does have some of that too.

zergcerebrates said:

Its called globalisation and open market. Different streets will have different stuff Nanjing road has all the Chinese stuff you can find.

Click to expand...

Balance and integration still leave a lot to be desired IMO.

no1gizmo said:

Shanghai (from the viewpoint of a tourist) is very small.

There is Puxi with the Nanjing-Road, Pudong, the old town with the garden (forgot the name) and 新天地. Did I forget something?

Click to expand...

Depends on what you like, everyone is different. But two things off the top of my head that you missed are the museums around the People's Square and the People's Square itself.

jacks said:

You got to be one lazy tourist! Get up off your arse and go take a stroll around the tree-lined streets in the French concession.

Click to expand...

The last time I checked, the French don't have any concession in China anymore.

YelloPerilo said:

The last time I checked, the French don't have any concession in China anymore.

Click to expand...

Really!?!? They wouldn't let me or my dog in the park nearby the French concession when I went to Shanghai

Severiano said:

They are probably re-doing all the flood systems in Shanghai for the Expo. Right now, you cant walk one block on the sidewalk without running into construction. They are resurfacing almost every sidewalk and/or burying power lines. Its actually kind of annoying because there is dirt everywhere. I was in Beijing during the buildup for the olympics and I am in Shanghai for the build up for the expo, and I can say that there is much more renovation going on in Shanghai than there was in Beijing in 2008

Click to expand...

Its kinda disappointing that Chinese cities need events to clean up its image. Beijing olympics, World expo 2010, Guangzhou Asian Games, what else? I know that many Chinese cities are still developing and a lot of them are quite impressive but these face lift or improvements in older cities should be done long time ago.