[hkskyline]

I visited Shanghai back in September along with a number of cities in the Yangtze River Delta. My first impression of Shanghai was the awful traffic. I was stuck on the elevated expressway for about an hour, but got a chance to admire their very futuristic cityscape. There are a lot of new developments everywhere, and I have never seen a city with such bold expressions of modern architecture. The diversity, style, and height combined gave a certain level of uniqueness that is not easily replicable elsewhere.

Here is the first of my multi-part series on Shanghai - the nightlife on Nanjing Road, the busiest pedestrianized shopping street in the city.

Visit my new Shanghai gallery at : http://www.geocities.com/asiaglobe/gallery/shanghai.htm

Notice the lights on the ground. They actually change!

The lights are amazing, especially since you can see them for a long long stretch of the street.

There are also quite a few specimens of European-style architecture. The historic Bund district and the waterfront are not too far away from here.

I didn't particularly liked the shopping though. A lot of the clothes were geared for older people. Nevertheless there were a lot of young people hanging around here.

 

[simply Dan]

Very impressive! Also very tacky. I find similar scenes in Tokyo or New York to be generally more tastefully done.

 

[ganjavih]

Wow... most impressive. I'll have to plan a visit some time.

I love creative advertising with neon like that Coke ad. Dundas Square, take note.

 

[shumoon]

Very impressive! Also very tacky. I find similar scenes in Tokyo or New York to be generally more tastefully done.

Maybe it's tacky, but certainly not boring. I'll take the energy and pulse of Nanjing Road's neon over that of Times Square any day. When I visited Shanghai in 2002, I was amazed by the vibrancy of Nanjing Road and the nearby Bund at night. The Shanghainese know how to light up their city. Manhattan looked downright sleepy in comparison when I visited NYC this year. Moreover, Times Square seems very touristy, and thereby tacky, whereas I felt Nanjing Road was patronised much more by locals.

 

[wyliepoon]

Nanjing Road is the main street of Shanghai, like Yonge Street is to Toronto. Up until recently Nanjing Road was a street used by cars and trolley buses, but it has followed a recent Chinese trend to pedestrianize the main streets of cities. I visited Shanghai last year, and I had a chance to walk down Nanjing Road one late afternoon. Unfortunately, I never saw it at night, which would have been great as the photos suggest.

Nanjing Road during the day is still a nice place to visit. The street is lined with buildings designed in European architectural styles- Beaux-Arts to Art Deco. If you're pressed for time they've got little "zoomobiles" running up and down the pedestrian zone so you can get from one end of the street to the other quickly. There are more nice art deco buildings in the streets just off Nanjing Road, but most are gritty, unappreciated, and some are used as machine shops. Sad.

Despite its current attempt to look like New York or Tokyo, Nanjing Road has a long history of being Shanghai's "Great White Way". I've read that Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s had the most neon signs per capita in the world. The city with the second most? Vancouver, BC.