The Pensive Traveller - Tales From Shanghai
One of the things that led me to Shanghai was the architecture. I’m no expert, but I love skyscrapers. And Shanghai has them in abundance. One of my favourite memories of my first trip here in springtime was an afternoon and evening spent on the roof terrace of a bar on the Bund. This grand stretch of road is a throwback from colonial times, and consists of a long cavalcade of austere grey neoclassical buildings. The view from the Bund is one of the most spectacular in Asia – the skyscrapers of Pudong.
Just two decades ago, Pudong was nothing but swampland. Puxi, on the opposite side of the Huangpu river, was the only habitable part of the city. But Deng Xiaoping decided that Shanghai needed a business district to match Beijing, so he decreed the dredging of the marshes. Now, what stands across the Huangpu from downtown is a glistening forest of metal and lights.
First came the Oriental Pearl communications tower in 1995. Weird and space-age, this needle with its pink bubbles inspires a mixture of emotions. Some love it, some see it as a blot on the landscape. I fall into the first camp. I think it’s incredible. I first saw it as I walked down Fuzhou Lu from People’s Square towards the Bund. It is so bizarre that I stopped in my tracks. It is 1,535 feet of lunar magic; you almost expect to see aliens filing out from its base.
The Pearl was joined on the riverbanks in 1998 by the Jin Mao tower. This postmodern pagoda was designed by Chicago architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and rises 88 storeys (1,380 feet) into the smog. The proportions of the design revolve around the lucky number eight.
Both towers were overshadowed by the building of the World Financial Center, completed in 2008. Shanghai residents fondly refer to it as the Bottle Opener, thanks to the square gap close to the top. Rumour has it that the gap was originally supposed to be circular, but the authorities forced the architects to change it, fearing that the building would look like a giant Japanese flag.
I don’t have much reason to go to Pudong. I live and work in Puxi (the Chinese name for the opposite bank of the river) and have never been much of a fan of the characterless hinterland behind the skyscrapers. But yesterday I was sent to review a restaurant in the Hyatt hotel in the Jin Mao tower. Coming up out of Lujiazui metro station, the first thing that I saw was the Oriental Pearl, completely illuminated, pointing into the night sky and glittering. Laser beams slashed the air around it. Turning to the left, I saw the twin monoliths – Jin Mao and World Financial Centre. It’s difficult to describe how huge they are. Looking at them from a bar on the Bund, the look impressive, but standing beneath them is something else. They are staggeringly big. And lit up at night, they are a stunning beacon of Shanghai’s modernity.
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