Shanghai city trip with nightlife & China

materialistic thinking and consider you a cheap charley when you don't show big spender habit, so you better be careful and give your credit card only at the end of the session, and when they make the credit card imprint watch very careful, take the credit card back immediately after, otherwise several imprints might be made and you have some big problems the month later.

Shanghai restaurants are plenty and you better stay with Chinese restaurants, don't start to experiment with some strange restaurants like Mexican etc. you will end up in a mess. Anyway enjoy your stay and consider to be lucky when you have a good weather without smog. But in the evening all ways will lead to the nightlife spots.

In 1840 (after the first "opium war") the British / East India company forced the locals in Shanghai to open the harbor, they simply had the better weapons. The result was a division of the city of Shanghai into zones of influence (concessions) by the foreign political players. In 1847 the French turned up, in 1895 the Japanese, later the Italians etc..

The foreign commercial operations (trading houses, banks etc.) were concentrated on the 1.5 km stretch along the Huangpu River between Waibaidu Bridge and Yan'an Donglu, called The Bund, this is  a impressive piece of the city attracting thousands of people every evening to enjoy the beautiful panorama along the waterfront.

Traditional housing in Shanghai from the mid-nineteenth century consisted mostly of lilongs,

or dense networks of connected two-storey buildings occupying a city block with shops fronting outwards onto public streets, and residences above accessed from internal alleyways. The term lilong refers to these alleyways which are first reached through gateways from main streets, and then are hierarchically organized through semi-public, semi-private and private lanes and courtyards throughout the block. The apparent lack of formalized public space in the history of Chinese architecture can be partially explained by this model -- residents talk, cook, eat, wash and play in these alleyways and form a strong social fabric which extends the nuclear family unit to a network of extended family and neighbors. This homogeneous mat of housing throughout the city was augmented with uniform medium-rise worker housing in the '50s and '60s. In recent years with wholesale razing of neighborhoods for high-rise developments and transplanting entire communities to government subsidized housing on the city's fringes (part of the massive shift towards private home ownership), comes the discontinuation of a way of life which gave at least a semblance of stability and security to the city's inhabitants.

As regrettable as it is to see such lively urban fabric instantly erased,

clearing such communities is an upgrading of the city's amenities and marks just the latest wave of urban renewal. The low-rise clustered urban form was a result of developers in the late nineteenth century rushing to meet new housing demands in a city transforming itself from feudal village into modern city. At the onset of the Communist revolution, the state assumed ownership of land and enforced a collectivized model of living.

Municipal agencies have now identified nearly four hundred structures and 11 districts as 'fine historic buildings and zones', for example, detached garden houses in the former French concession. Such policy seeks to preserve an urban form unique among Chinese cities, though a clear strategy for their ownership, upkeep and protection has yet to be approved.

A parallel phenomenon to the displacement of lower class residents sees citizens from the burgeoning middle class renting closer to the centre of the city in a glut of residential apartment complexes. Developers have been having a field day buying rights and providing upmarket housing in the form of post-modern pastiches taking on such names as Versailles and the French Riviera. Further up the economic scale, developers are also pillaging the worst of Western sprawl with gated communities and suburban replica villages in far flung Pudong, Gubei and Hongqiao districts.

Exemplars of contemporary architecture are still mainly the domain of foreign architects -- SOM, KPF, Jerde, Foster, MVRDV, Wood+Zapata, Arquitectonica and RTKL all have projects here, with Tange, Graves and many others well on the way. While the presence of foreign design expertise is upping the ante with local design institutes and contributing to an international standardized cityscape, these buildings with notable exceptions are largely singular monuments. Planning authorities, property developers and architects have rarely beneficially focused interests. The Lujiazui financial districts opposite the Bund and the rest of Pudong have succumbed to engineering-led urban planning and scale less development parcels which leave little opportunity for an urbane pedestrian environment. Huaihai and Nanjing roads have developed as credible 'market streets' and their skylines have given hierarchy to the city's urban form. As the public domain is upgraded and the built fabric stitched together over time, hopefully we will see a more legible environment for humans within this realm of isolated shopping malls and high-rise towers with some Shanghai nightlife.

The urban architecture of Shanghai is the physical corollary of the paradoxes and conflicts in current political dogma, a turbulent modern history and an inherently flexible and resourceful people.
Author  Darryl Chen  COPYRIGHT EMAP Architecture  and Gale Group

The Hangzhou bridge

Hangzhou Bridge	The world's longest sea bridge has been opened between Shanghai and Ningbo some time ago The 36 kilometers long Hangzhou Bay bridge shortens the distance between the two cities by 120 kilometers for 1.1 billion euro construction cost. Six lanes for car traffic are available. So far, the Donghai Bridge from Shanghai to Yangshan with 32.5 kilometers is the longest sea bridge in the world World.
Hangzhou Bridge