Shanghai Architecture Tour

Day two in Shanghai and our first stop was the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall...one huge great fricking museum covering literally every aspect of Shanghai's urban planning from Colonial times until about 2030. It started off with a bunch of scale models of pretty much the whole of central Shanghai and then, in true Chinese-style, it went into facts and figure about every region within it. Despite large amounts of propaganda about the speed of Chinese development in Shanghai (take for example the TV screens showing then-and-now photos it was fascinating to see how they were planning its expansion and modernisation. (Hmm now why would you put all the photos dated as recently as 1985 in black and white alongside beautiful blue-skied photos from today?!)

As far as crazy plans go building an airport on the scale of Shanghai's is pretty high on the list, as is building the world's first commercial high-speed maglev train...but now they're planning to build a container port right out in the ocean around a few pretty little islands - nutters!

After a quick stop for pancakes and hot-chocolate mixed with rabbit droppings (yum) we got ourselves over to Pudong to see the Oriental Pearl TV Tower first-hand. We particularly loved the feel-good music blasting out of the tower...wow just see how it uplifts our spirits!

WOW its bloody huge! We went on apparently the clearest day for the past few weeks but even so there wasn't the greatest visibility besides the huge array of new skyscrapers next-door and a little beyond the Bund area. It seemed our museum from earlier that day was then again repeated in the basement of the tower but hey! A little cinema action was necessary later that night watching ??? and then back down the ever colourful shopping streets to bed.