Travel Notes #上海
Jin Mao Tower: A 420.5-Metre Pagoda with Thirteen Tapering Stages
Jin Mao Tower stands in Lujiazui in Pudong. At 420.5 metres and eighty-eight storeys, it was the tallest building in mainland China when it finished in 1999 and remains one of the most recognisable high-rises in Shanghai. Adrian Smith of the American firm SOM led the design; the facade narrows in thirteen stages into a pagoda shape, a phrase about climbing step by step. The eighty-eighth floor observation deck sits at 340 metres over about 1,520 square metres, one of the earliest high-level viewing platforms in the city.
The Bund: One and a Half Kilometres Where Two Centuries of Shanghai Stand Side by Side
The Bund runs from Garden Bridge in the north to Jinling Road East in the south, a little over 1.5 kilometres. Fifty-two buildings of the modern era stand along it, twenty-three of them national protected monuments, and in 1996 the Bund architecture grouping entered the World Heritage list. By day it is red brick and Ionic columns; after dark the whole row sinks into a golden edge while Lujiazui answers from the far bank. Free and open around the clock.
Shanghai: Two Shores of the Huangpu, Foreign Architecture and a Skyline
Shanghai goes by the short form Hu and the old name Shen, sits where the Yangtze meets the sea and belongs to East China. The Huangpu divides the city in two: west, the foreign-built architecture, lane houses and plane-tree streets of the treaty-port years; east, the towers of Lujiazui. From the museum at People Square to the Bund, across on a two-yuan ferry, up to the 546-metre deck of the Shanghai Tower; then turn into the old town for Ming rockeries at Yu Garden, the nine-turning bridge at the City God Temple, or an afternoon in the narrow lanes of Xintiandi and Tianzifang.
Shanghai World Financial Center: the 474-metre observatory
The first of Lujiazui's three towers to top out, 492 metres and 101 floors, opened in 2008. Its observatory on floor 100 sits at 474 metres above a fifty-five-metre stretch of transparent glass floor — the earliest place in Shanghai to leave you hanging in mid-air.
Oriental Pearl Tower: a 468-metre television tower
On the Huangpu in Lujiazui, 468 metres tall and open since May 1995, this was China's first television tower designed and built entirely by Chinese teams. Three observation levels — the space capsule, upper sphere and lower sphere — frame the classic view across the river.
Shanghai Tower: a vertical city at 632 metres
In the heart of Lujiazui, 632 metres tall and 127 floors above ground, fully open since 2016 — China's tallest building and third in the world. The observatory sits at 546 metres on floor 118, a 1,000-tonne damper fills floor 126, and the city's highest bookshop is on 52.