Shanghai

Lying on the west bank of the Pacific Ocean, the east edge of Asian continent and the tip of the Yangtze River delta, Shanghai is a fair leap port strategically well-located. Shanghai is one of China's largest economic centers and a city of historical and cultural relics. It has three islands in its territory: Chongming, Changxing and Hengsha Island with Chongming Island as China's third largest island.

Known as "Shanghai-style culture", the Shanghai Culture has gradually taken shape from integrating China's traditional culture of Jiangnan (Wu Culture) as its historical basis with European and American cultures, which were introduced since the opening of Shanghai and had far-reaching effects. Thus, the Shanghai Culture is ancient and modern, traditional and trend, open and unique.

Since reform and opening up, Shanghai has hosted several large-scale cultural activities and built up a number of national-class cultural facilities, including the Shanghai Grand Theatre, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Library, Shanghai Movie Center. Shanghai has a lot of places of attraction such as Xintiandi, Nanjing Road, and Yu Garden well-known to visitors at home and abroad. Buildings in Shanghai are a big attraction as well. The Bund, Shanghai Shikumen houses as well as modern facilities in Shanghai style, as the convergence of various ancient and modern architectural styles, are a product of integration of the native Shanghai culture and foreign cultures.

The most dynamic city in the world's fastest- changing nation, Shanghai is an exhilarating, ever-morphing metropolis that isn't just living China's dream, but is setting the pace for the rest of the world.

Once a playground for foreign adventurers and socialites, the one-time whore of the Orient is now where home-grown tycoons build soaring monuments to capitalism and the locals party all night. But despite a past as evocative as it is notorious, Shanghai has dispensed with the rear-view mirror, pushed the pedal to the floor and is roaring towards its imagined future so fast that keeping up is almost impossible. New developments spring up weekly, while the rapidly growing middle classes work seven days a week in the hope of graduating to the big-time.

Recently featured in many business and travel magazines and newspapers, Shanghai has seemingly once again become the latest "It" city of the world. Much like in the first half of the 20th century, visitors from around the world are flocking here, drawn by curiosity, a sense of possibility, the lure of potential professional and financial success, or perhaps simply a desire to be in the coolest, brashest, and most exciting city in the new century. While Shanghai lacks the classical Chinese monuments of Beijing, its colonial legacy gives it a character all its own.

This museum of East meets West on Chinese soil is also China's capital of commerce, industry, and finance, and the one city that best shows where China is headed at the dawn of the 21st century.