The View from Shanghai’s Tallest Buildings

You may recall when I started my series on China that I mentioned I was posting the trip in reverse, so this week we’re moving to Shanghai, were my adventures there this year began.  Shanghai is an interesting city, and one that admittedly took me a couple of visits to really get into.  The city is just SO big!  It does have a really nice skyline though, and of course a central river, which adds to its appeal for me.

Last time I was in Shanghai, I ended up staying on the Bund side of the Huangpu River, with a nice view of the financial district.  While I was there, the city was draped in the clouds and fog that it is sort of known for (the city has a similar phenomenon to San Francisco… well, plus a whole lot of pollution).  In the photo I got of the city, which was one of my favorites from last year, you couldn’t even see the three giant skyscrapers as they disappeared up into the clouds.

This year though, it was a slightly different story. I was only in town for a few days this go around, but managed to have some decent weather while I was there, AND I was fortunate to get to stay in the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, the hotel inside the city’s third tallest building.  I’ll talk more about the hotel next week, but I’ll point out now that the hotel starts on the 53rd floor, and extends up to the 87th floor.  It’s really something else!  Well, as it turns out, the building has an observation deck, so I decided to check it out, and that is where the first photo in this series was taken from.  It has a breathtaking view, and as you can see from the photo, Shanghai offers a lot to take in.  Well, while I was there, I thought to myself, you know, if the view from here is awesome, the views from the other, taller buildings MUST be even better, right?  The following two images are from those towers.  I tried to frame the Oriental Pearl Tower, the odd looking building on the right, the same from each tower so you could get a sense of the way the view changes from each.  In the image immediately below you’ll see a building with a bunch of bright lights on top, that’s the Jin Mao Tower where the image above was taken!  These buildings are crazy tall!  The next image below is taken from the Shanghai Tower, currently the world’s second tallest building.  The Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center building are out of the frame to the right in that image.  Finally, since I like the Oriental Pearl Tower so much, I threw in an image of it from the ground (well, technically one story up on a walkway… but close enough, given the previous three images! 🙂  ).

Till next week!

–Dan Thompson