Shanghai Holidays

Just the mere mention of ‘Shanghai’ conjures up mystery, romance and general decadence. Pre – 1949, cosmopolitan Shanghai was a magnet for seekers of wealth, idle colonialists, explorers and the dispossessed. The city’s oddities were due to the unusual circumstances of the city’s existence. Written into the Treaty of Nanjing was the notion of extraterritoriality, which translated as foreign nationals not being bound by Chinese law, but rather by the laws of their own consuls. Basically anything went. Until 1949, foreigners dominated commerce, banking and industry, amassing huge fortunes and transforming the landscape of foreign concessionary sections of Shanghai.

Everything went belly up in 1949, when Mao and the communists took to power and swept the good times and rock and roll away. A legacy of these heady times is Shanghai’s Bund where on and around this waterfront promenade are a vast series of grandiose pre-1949 buildings. After four decades of austerity, economic reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping reawakened Shanghai. Just across the Huangpu River is the new Shanghai, a high-tech development of skyscrapers, the centrepiece of which is the rocket-shaped Oriental Pearl TV tower.

Top spots include Yu Gardens and Bazaar- Shanghai’s finest traditional garden, the Bund for colonial grandeur and Nanjing Road (for shopping), Shanghai Museum for its mighty collection of relics, Pudong and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower for its stunning views, Jade Buddha Temple and the old French Concession area.