Monday, February 12th.

Here I am for another daily report on life in Shanghai! Today I was able to see some of the city's most famous sights, and had a heck of a lot of fun while I was at it.

First stop this morning was the Bund. The Bund, for those wondering, is a row of beautiful buildings stretching for around 4km along the eastern bank of Shanghai's Huangpu river - dating from the late 19th and early 20th century, these beautiful old places were built by various European banks and institutions when Shanghai was a centre of trade for the whole of China. A walk along this strip took me past all manner of structures, including what I've heard described as the "Orwellian" Broaway Mansions, what was once the tallest building between Cairo and San Francisco, and wierdest of all, the "Monument Tower to the People's Heroes", a peculiarly communist structure, with 3 angled pillars coming together at their tip, a carved frescoe around the base and..... an art gallery inside the base. It strikes me as peculiarly Shanghai to be selling paintings literally -inside- a monumental communist structure. At any rate, it was a pleasant trip, and a thoroughly enjoyable dip into Shanghai's past.

And with that, my next target was Shanghai's spectacular future. In 1990, the government decided that the area East of the Huangpu river, Pudong (literally "river east") would be developed as part of China's huge economic growth campaign. 17 years later, and Pudong (and particularly the area directly across from the Bund, Lujiazui) is a kind of futuristic cityscape - nothing there is more than 15 years old, and while there are some real beauties - The Jin Mao Tower, the under construction Shanghai World Financial Centre, and those buildings that are in Mission Impossible 3, but there are also some real stinkers - I mentioned the Oriental Pearl yesterday, and that's probably the worst of the lot - it's supposed to look like a gigantic string of pearls, butI've never know any pearls that are silver and bright pink (seriously, I'm talking, fluoro, hot pink). Plus, raw, unpainted concrete isn't exactly futuristic. Apparently the views from the observation decks (there are 3 at various levels) are amazing, but the pricing is ridiculous - from 100 Yuan for all 3 levels, down to 70 for only the lower pearl, and there's a more economical alternative down the road - but I'll get to that later.

One funny thing about Lujiazui is that it's incredibly pedestrian unfriendly - essentially the area is a series of huge commercial towers - but they're not all concentrated together like you find in most cities, instead they're spread out and divided by a series of wide, wide roads which criss-cross the place. And sometimes, there are no pedestrian lights at all(not that they help, I think that, like in America, you can right turn on a red light - and apparently honking as you go into a turn is a valid substitute for looking out for pedestrians :p) - at one point, I wanted to get to the other side of this major thoroughfare, and I swear, it took my 5 minutes to walk this huge circle just to get there. :p

But back to the observation decks - Jin Mao Tower, currently the 4th tallest building in the world (just pipping Hong Kong's 2IFC, which I went up inside about a week ago) has an incredible one on the 88th floor - 340 metres above the ground, making it one of the highest in the world. So I rocked up to Jin Mao at around 4:30, with the intention to stick around and watch the sun go down. Again, the Lonely Planet guide gave me a bum steer (I'm gonna compile a list for delivery to Lonely Planet on arrival back home) and said the price was 50 Yuan to get to the top, but I was more than happy to pay the 70 and head on up. Plus, I got a voucher that told me that my admission entitled me to a free pearl on reaching the top - which made me wonder what the catch was, but I headed up to the top either way. The view from the 88th floor is incredible, even though it was terribly smoggy and visibility was probably only a dozen or so kilometres - the buildings in Puxi (West of the river) were getting lost in a sea of smog - it's really an incredible city.

BTW, turns out the 'free pearl' deal was totally legit! I got to the top, and there was this counter set up there, and I watched the lady pry open and oyster and hand over this little pink pearl (not the same colour as the oriental pearl :p). So now I have a pearl. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with it, but it's a nice memento all the same.

another amazing thing about the Jin Mao Tower is that it houses the highest hotel in the world - the Shanghai Grand Hyatt. The Grand Hyatt also has a gigantic atrium - over 30 stories high, from the 56th floor right to the tip fo the building - and you can look all the way down the centre of it from the observation deck, which is rather vertiginous. The final incredible thing about Jin Mao is actually the building next door - the Shanghai World Financial Centre. Started in 1997 - before the Jin Mao was even finished, the SWFC's construction was halted by the big Asian economic crisis, but restarted again a couple of years ago. It's gonna be 100 storeys tall and over 490 metres tall, and literally just across the road from the Jin Mao - which means that right now, the top of it is almost exactly on the level with the observation deck - you can literally watch the construction work happening across there as it goes up. Anyway, I spent about an hour and a half at the observation deck, got some -very- cool photos, and came back down in the Shanghai night.

Well, that was the long and short of my day, tune in tomorrow for, with any luck, my adventures in Renmin Square, the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall and Renmin Park