The name Shanghai still conjures images of romance, mystery and adventure, but for four decades it was an austere backwater. After the success of Mao Zedong's communist revolution in 1949, the authorities clamped down hard on Shanghai, calling it a playground of gangsters and colonial adventurers.
And so it was. In its heyday, the 1920s and '30s, cosmopolitan Shanghai was a dynamic melting pot for people, ideas and money from all over the planet. Business boomed, fortunes were made, and everything seemed possible. It was a time of breakneck industrial progress, swaggering confidence and smoky jazz venues.
Thanks to economic reforms implemented in the 1980s by Deng Xiaoping, Shanghai's commercial potential has emerged again. Stand today on the historic Bund and look across the Huangpu River. The Oriental Pearl TV Tower looms like a space rocket over the ambitious skyline of the Pudong financial district. Alongside the awesome Shanghai World Financial Center, the glittering, 88-story Jinmao Building and the futuristic Shanghai Stock Exchange, the 1,535-ft/468-m tower is a symbol Read More ... of this modern city. The 128-story Shanghai Tower—under construction —is poised to take over by 2014 as the largest building in China.Shanghai is rushing headlong to make up for lost time. Glass-and-steel skyscrapers reach for the clouds, Mercedes sedans cruise the neon-lit streets, modern department stores stock all the stylish trappings available in New York, and the restaurant and clubbing scene pulsates with an energy all its own. Perhaps more than any other city in Asia, Shanghai has the confidence and sheer determination to forge a glittering future as one of the world's most important commercial centers.
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