I’ve been in Shanghai for few days and visited many quarters, it’s not easy to see everything, it’s a huge city. I visited the French concession or quarter; it’s where you see many building from the era when the French were in Shanghai. I also visited The Bund; it’s where Shanghai first started, and just a century ago it was no more than a little fishing village on the banks of the Yangtze River. It’s really startling when you see the old part where in the 1800s and early 1900s many colonial powers Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Japan, the United States and the UK had concessions where they could freely conduct business and administer their settlements. You see foreign bank buildings on the west side of the river where many buildings were built in the early 1900s. All of these buildings have been restored and they look very impressive. On the east side of the Yangtze River is where the new development of shanghai and it’s called the Pudong, that were many banks and foreign multinationals set their head office. Again, it’s as impressive buildings that show the greatness of China. The Bund and the surrounding areas show the great economic times of Shanghai and China, one thing that’s always ignored when I read about the rising power of the Chinese and its economy, is that China has been prosperous and powerful throughout history, it’s only at the turn of 19th century that the country was weak and controlled by colonial powers. Many of the world’s inventions come from China. In the 1930s, Shanghai was considered the most prosperous Asian city.
I also walked around Nanjing walking district, it was a bit annoying because many people will approach you to try to sell you something when they see you’re a foreigner and I read on the internet that some of them will try to scam you the tourists. At the end I tell anyone who would approach me, no watches, no bags, no IPhones, no massages, thank you, and some of them would laugh at it 🙂
