Pudong: Are you Kidding Me?

Right across the Bund is Pudong, that which probably most of you have seen pictures. It is the crazy skyline, with the Pearl of the Orient TV tower (a style and form all to itself), the Jin Mao Tower, and the new World Financial Center completing nearing completion. The crazy part about all of this was this was farmland 15 years ago. Everyone talks about how they remember it being just ride paddies and such. It is just mind blowing not only it has exploded both horizontally and vertically. I went to the top of the of the Jin Mao Tower (90 floors) and still couldn’t see the end to the buildings in Pudong. This growth has sort of paralleled the explosion in the rest of the country. In 1992, under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, the state detached its land use rights from ownership of urban land to allow legal persons to transact land use rights. Pudong instantly transformed into a bustling metropolis, probably signifying Shanghai’s and China’s new role on the world economic stage.

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