Shanghai Surprise

Unless you lived in the far reaches of outer space for the last 15 years, chances are you have already read about a zillion press articles chronicling the rise an rise of China’largest city to rang of global metropolis for 21st century. Once known as the Paris of the East, Shanghai has always enjoyed a special status among China’s major cities as the most cosmopolitan of them all,and the specificity of its culture & mentality is well know to the Chinese: in Mandarin,it’s called “Hai Pai”, the mixture of east and west, the traditional and the modern. After decades of slumber and oblivion, Shanghai slowly started rising back from ashes in the early1990s,and has since gone on to become the ultimate showcase of the booming economy of mainland China.
As a result,not since the 1930s,when it was party central for the lost generation and the indisputed financial hub of the Asia Pacific,has the city been more fashionable and electrifying.