SHANGHAI, CHINA

We arrived in a port far far away from the downtown area because of the height of our ship and new low bridges. So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere amongst containers, and cars and large cranes. It took one hour and a half by Shuttle bus to get to the centre of Shanghai.

Our tour consisted of seeing the new Shanghai which is what we wanted to see. We had been here before and saw the older part of Shanghai with the gardens and the old stores and temples. We were very very surprised how much Shanghai has grown in such a short time. We were first of all taken to the Long Yang Lu Station where we boarded the Maglev Train, the fastest train in the world. It travels using a magnetic levation system which means no wheels or rail friction. We traveled at speeds of 431 km/hr and travelled a distance of 30 km in 8 min. It was so fast that the train on the other side sped past us and you could hardly see it but only felt the vibration of the passing. It was a smooth and fun ride. We took the train to the airport and back.

We then headed to the downtown area of Shanghai. We went up the Oriental Pearl TV and Radio Tower observation deck and took photos of the smoggy areas below. We saw huge container ships carrying grain and large containers moving down the river. We were amazed at the high very modern office towers. Where we were, in 1990's there were only rice paddies. The pace of growth is phenomenal. The tall building looking like a cork opener is the World Financial Centre and is 101 stories high, and has a restaurant at the very very top. The building next to it, was the Jinmao building, where we came in the evening to take photos out of the 88th floor. There was construction taking place everywhere and cranes were moving all around us. Shanghai has built 6 tunnels and 5 bridges since 1990 to deal with all the traffic and expansion. There are 18.5 million people in this city alone. It was huge and smoggy and mind boggling. China wants to make Shanghai their financial centre and second to none in the world. They are starting to build the next tallest building and have 19 five star hotels and 46 four star hotels and that is in Shanghai alone.

Along the way out of the port, we saw huge warehouses and buildings housing large corporations such as Sharp, 3 M, car manufacturers such as Volvo, Audi, Honda, Toyota, etc. The apartments housing all the inhabitants of this city are many and go on and on in the distance.

We were very very impressive with the startling growth of this city but decided we would never ever want to live here although it is very clean and has a lot of green areas. Just far too too many people.