By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul. Carl Sandburg
Though we’ve shared a fair number of photos detailing the quaintly historic, or quintessentially Chinese looking elements in this city, we can’t forget that Shanghai is one of the largest and most modern cities in the world.
Shanghai is split into two distinct parts divided by the Huangpu River. Puxi, (pronounced pu-shi) is the older more established district with markets, historic sights, and tree lined neighborhoods. Pudong is more recently developed, and therefore the more modern side, with large skyscrapers making up the financial district known locally as the Lujiazui Finance Zone.
Any image of the Shanghai skyline shows the downtown area of Pudong. Four buildings rise above the cityscape here providing a distinct and memorable view – the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Jin Mao Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Tower, and the Shanghai Tower.
We have family discussions trying to determine which is our favorite. It is an ever-changing list as each is stunning and provides a unique view from whatever angle you happen to be at.
One of Marco’s favorite things to do is to catalog the tallest, fastest, deepest, most populated, or whatever the “est” of any item could be. So in respect to that, here are important details for the Shanghai skyline:
1. Shanghai Tower: 623 Meters|2,073 Feet. 128 stories. Completed in 2015
2. Shanghai World Financial Center: 492 meters|1,614 feet. 101 stories. Completed in 2008.
3. Oriental Pearl Tower: 470 meters|1,535 feet. Completed in 1994.
4. Jin Mao Tower: 421 meters|1, 380 feet. 88 stories. Completed in 1999.
We decided to start at the top, and chose the Shanghai Tower for our adventure on this day. Shanghai tower is the most recent building in the skyline and hasn’t yet caught on in popularity with local tourists. By far the crowds are at the Pearl Tower and we found a very small line and relative calm atop this skyscraper on a Sunday.
The Shanghai Tower is the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world after (my favorite of all buildings to say) the Burj Kalifa in Dubai. It boasts a number of unique”est” traits. It is the tallest building with a twist of 90° in the world. This twist provides for its graceful ascent and is said to help it structurally withstand the winds it gets at its great height. It also has the world’s fastest elevator. I have to believe it is also the world’s quietest elevator because, as we ascended up 2,000 feet at close to 43 miles an hour, I barely heard wind, let alone any mechanical gear or engine. The building has also garnered a lot of attention for its green design. The exterior is actually enclosed in a separate skin of glass that provides for more interior space as well as acting something like an insulation layer similar to a thermos, keeping the interior cooler or warmer while using less energy overall. This extra layer also allows for the nightly light show that beams out across the night skyline.
The views from the top do not disappoint. As fear of heights does not run in our family, we all spent a couple hours just taking in the views and gaining a new perspective on our city. We were able to get a look at the other, no less beautiful but unfortunately shorter, buildings from above. We all left with a softer spot in our hearts for this tallest, and truly beautiful skyscraper – the Shanghai Tower.
