words from the world

From the motorway, in the distance, the concrete and glass colossuses of the thriving district of Pudong loom. It's precisely this district which started a metamorposis about 20 years ago and keeps on raising up thanks to foreign investments. It's today the economic lung of China ; not bad for a district that was a marshyland about thirty years behind!







Since 1990 the annual growth rate exceeds 10%, a genuine paradise for capitalist people when the government vainly tries to reconcile a communist policy in a city that is the total opposite of this idea. An increasing pitch between the neo-capitalist Chinese people and their compatriots who drive a rickshaw or sell vegetables can be seen everywhere in the street. In spite of the frightening, hard-to-accept contradictions, the first steps in the city are thrilling.




We wander about among the glass towers. Some of them are under construction and others didn't get out from the ground yet. High hedges mark out the building sites. Virtual skyscrapers-to-be representations are shown on them. On the other bank, at the end of the Bund (pedestrian street alongside the river), another gigantic project is under progress; the construction of the offshore port of Shanghai. A project that should end for the 2010 world exhibition the city will organize.
The evening stroll on the Bund is heady, the buildings on the other bank are adorned with many colours while the restaurant-boats and promotional boats come and go on the river. They took the place of the diurnal activity of barges and merchant ships.




The growth of the city is recent but its districts already have their history and their singularity. The old town and French concession districts offer nice time before taking the Maglev to go to the airport. The first magnetic levitation train in the world. No railroad and an incredible average speed of 430km/h ! No excuse any more to arrive late at your office!



Before leaving Shanghai, we hop on a lift which propels us up to the second sphere of the oriental pearl tower. A magical view over the turbulent Shanghai. We see several plots of land will change all, in a more or less long future, into pharaonic projects.