The old town’s been shanghaied
For a moment there I thought I was in Vegas!
The view from the 57th floor of the JW Marriott, [Pictured] the architecturally brilliant, sky-piercing needle in the centre of Shanghai, makes me wonder just where I am.
The city is awash in a flood of neon and fluorescence. A one-kilometre section of Nanjing Rd, known as Walking Street is burning more electricity in lights than the entire city of London. This is crazy, this is China.
A towering edifice called 1, Century Boulevard, the Jingmao Building faces the Bund across the Huangpu river and with a total height of 420.5 meters, it ranks third in the world and first in China, towering 88 floors above the city, with the observation deck on the 88th 
floor at the height of 340.1 meters covering an area of 1,520 square meters and the largest observation deck currently in China – not for long I suspect!
And the Bund! [Pictured below] Just like the strip in Vegas – by day it looks like and old hag, but at night when she puts on her neon jewellery, she’s a real tart – brazen, glitzy and ready to take on the world.
In no time at all, Shanghai’s gone from a colonial gem to a huge, effervescent metropolis.
It’s been designed by the creators of Futurama I’m sure, or at least the creators of The Jetsons.
It’s huge, fast, space age and fantastic (if not just a little scary!).
Report from Kevin Moloney International Travel Writer and TravleMole correspondent
John Alwyn-Jones
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