Shanghai: City of the Future

The day we arrived after spending the night on the sleeper train (optimistically titled) we collapsed in a heap at the hostel, and yesterday it rained constantly, so today is the first day we've really been able to explore Shanghai. We had been told to expect a very Westernised city, and so it has proven, but there are pockets of the city that are somehow more what we expected from China than anything we saw in Beijing.

Our first stop this morning was the Shanghai Museum, free to enter but restricted to 5,000 visitors per day. We enjoyed in particular an exhibition of Chinese calligraphy. From there it was a short walk to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum. The third floor was almost entirely taken up with a truly remarkable scale model of the city as it will look in 2020. The lighting even changed to mimic night, at which point the buildings lit up.

We knew where to go to see some of the city's dramatic skyline as it is today, so we walked down Nanjing Lu, Shanghai's busiest shopping street - resisting the temptation to pop in and buy a Rolex - towards the river. From there we got a great view of the Pudong district, though unfortunately while the rain held off for the day the clouds were still present.