SHANGHAI, CHINA

Shanghai's relatively small city center makes it easy to navigate. It consists of two basic districts, Pu Xi (western town) and Pu Dong (eastern town), facing one another across the Huang Pu River. As a general rule, Pu Xi embodies "Old Shanghai" and Pu Dong represents "New Shanghai." Excellent examples of this dichotomy are characterized in the architecture, with the early 20th century facades of the Bund on the Pu Xi side such as the Peace Hotel and the conspicuously modern architecture of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and the Grand Hyatt Shanghai on the Pu Dong side.

Pu Dong

In the early 1990s, Pu Dong consisted of little but farmland. In a plan to elevate Shanghai to the level of a major Asian commercial center, the Chinese government created the Pudong New Area Open Economic Development Zone, with a fast rising skyline and loads of investment money. After 1992 the rapid economic development of the area changed the demographics of Pu Dong, creating a growing cosmopolitan flavor with a more modern and technical sophistication than the... more