I recently returned from spending about 5 days in Shanghai. I was there for about the same time about 4 years ago during a 17-day visit to the middle kingdom. Shanghai seems more like a metropolis than Tokyo in that it has more than 2000 skyscrapers, but it's population is actually 17 million to Tokyo 20 million. I think this is mostly due to the annexation of West Tokyo, which doesn’t really feel like part of the city. There seems to be an enormous amount of opportunity in Shanghai to make money and it seems to be progressing rapidly, but I think they still trail Tokyo in sophistication, but there are lots of improvements. The advantages are cheap taxis, it is usually less than $3 anywhere you’d want to go in the inner city area. If you choose wisely you can eat and drink cheaply as well. However, if you want to go swanky there are plenty of good places to spend your money as well and I’ll be posting in the next week about some of the better places we went to. I think it’s the closest Asian city to Tokyo in energy, but I sure wouldn’t want to start over again in another country.
The picture above is a view of Pudong from across the river at the Bund.
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