Facts about Shanghai
During and after World War II, massive population increases in Shanghai led to the extensive subdivision of many shikumen houses.
Most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong, and large numbers of emigrants settled in the North Point area, which came to be known as "Little Shanghai".
Shanghai has an excellent public transportation system and, in contrast to other major Chinese cities, has clean streets and surprisingly little air pollution.
One uniquely Shanghainese cultural element is the Shikumen (???, ???, "stone gate") residencies.
Much of pre-modern Shanghai culture was an integration of cultural elements from these two regions.
New inventions like electricity and trams were quickly introduced, and westerners turned Shanghai into a huge metropolis.
Shanghai faces the East China Sea (part of the Pacific Ocean) and is bisected by the Huangpu River.
Noel Coward wrote his novel Private Lives while staying at Shanghai's Cathay Hotel.
During the First Opium War in the early-nineteenth century]], British forces temporarily held Shanghai.
Within Shanghai itself, there are elevated highways, and tunnels and bridges are used to link Puxi to Pudong.
Tom Bradby's 2002 historical detective novel The Master of Rain is set in the Shanghai of 1926.
Shanghai has stronger links to both the Chinese interior and the central government, in addition to a stronger base of manufacturing and technology.
Before the 1990s, Shanghai's annual tax burden was an average of 70 percent of the national total.
In 1946, when the French departed, the foreign concessions in Shanghai were closed.
The residents of Shanghai have often been stereotyped by other Chinese peoples as being pretentious, arrogant, and xenophobic.
Shanghai has two airports: Hongqiao and Pudong International, which has the second highest (combined) traffic next only to Hong Kong Airport in China.
Three railways intersect in Shanghai: Jinghu Railway (??? Beijing-Shanghai Line) which passes through Nanjing, Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway (??? Hu Hang Line), and Xiaoshan-Ningbo (??? Xiao Yong Line).
During the 1990s, there existed what was often described as the politically right-of-center "Shanghai clique," which included the president of the PRC Jiang Zemin and the premier of the PRC Zhu Rongji.
The Guangdong local associations represented the skilled workers of Shanghai, and belonged to the top level of Shanghai society.
Shanghai flourished as an entertainment center, and became the headquarters of Chinese cinema and popular music.
Expressways from Beijing (Jinghu Expressway) and from the region around Shanghai liaise with the city.
The war ended with the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, which opened several treaty ports, including Shanghai, for international trade.
Nearly all her works of bourgeois romanticism are set in Shanghai, and many have been made into arthouse films (see Eighteen Springs).
During the 1920s, Shanghai was also a center for opium smuggling, both domestic and international.
Much of the Shanghai culture was transferred to Hong Kong by the millions of emigrants and refugees after the Communist Revolution.
Shanghai is also home to the world's busiest port, followed by Singapore and Rotterdam.
Japan built the first factories there, and these were soon copied by other foreign powers, initiating the development of industry in Shanghai.
Shanghai was made a special city in 1927, and a municipality in May 1930.
According to the development schedule of the Government, by the year 2010, another eight lines will be built in Shanghai.
The tallest structure in China, the distinctive Oriental Pearl Tower, is located in Shanghai.
The Sino-Japanese War, fought in 1894-1895 over control of Korea, concluded with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which established Japan as an additional foreign power in Shanghai.
In 1992, the central government under Jiang Zemin, a former Mayor of Shanghai, began reducing the tax burden on Shanghai and encouraging both foreign and domestic investment.
Until 1991, Shanghai contributed 70 percent of the total tax revenue of the Peoples Republic of China, and was denied economic liberalization because of its importance to China's fiscal well-being.
Shanghai is seen as the birthplace of everything considered modern in China; and was the cultural and economic center of East Asia for the first half of the twentieth century.
One of the great Chinese novels of the twentieth century, Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged, is partially set in Shanghai.
The vernacular language is Shanghainese, a dialect of Wu Chinese; while the official language is Standard Mandarin.
China’s first short film, The Difficult Couple (Nanfu Nanqi, 1913), and the country’s first fictional feature film, Orphan Rescues Grandfather (Gu-er Jiuzu Ji, 1923), were both produced in Shanghai.
British and American businessmen made a great deal of money in trade and finance, and Germany used Shanghai as a base for investing in China.
Neal Stephenson's science fiction novel The Diamond Age is set in an ultra-capitalist Shanghai of the future.
In 1905, the Tong Reng Tan was abolished and replaced by the municipality of Shanghai municipality.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Shanghai became an industrial center and a center of revolutionary left-wing politics.
Shanghai experiences all four seasons, with freezing temperatures during the winter season and an average high of 32 degrees C (90 degrees F) during the hottest months of July and August.
Shanghai’s strategic position at the mouth of the Yangtze River (or Chбng Ji?ng, Long River) made it an ideal location for trade with the West, and during the nineteenth century its role changed radically.
Economically, the city made little or no progress during the Maoist era and the Cultural Revolution, but even during the most tumultuous times, Shanghai was able to maintain relatively high economic productivity and social stability.
The Western part of Shanghai was one of the most modern "European" cities in the world.
The major Shanghai companies which had come under the control of the Kuomintang government had become corrupt after moving to inland China in 1937.
European and American inhabitants of Shanghai called themselves the Shanghailanders.
Many communists were killed in a major surprise attack by gangsters on April 12, 1927, in the Chinese-administered part of Shanghai, and Zhou Enlai fled the city.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city fell after the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, and was occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945.
Early in the twentieth century, the Western part of Shanghai was four times larger then the Chinese part.
Bankers from different local associations began to cooperate with each other in the Shanghai Native Bankers Guild, using a democratic decision-making process.
Resentment towards the foreign presence in Shanghai rose among both the entrepreneurs and the workers.
Shanghai is the financial and trade center of the Peoples Republic of China.
Political power in Shanghai has traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to higher positions within the PRC central government.
Shanghai merchants and bankers had lost faith that the Kuomintang government could maintain a healthy economy in Shanghai.
Until the nineteenth century, Shanghai was not a major city, and in contrast to other major Chinese cities, has only a few ancient Chinese landmarks.
The two characters in the name "Shanghai" literally mean "up/above" and "sea."
Shanghai cultural artifacts include the cheongsam, a modernization of the traditional Chinese/Manchurian qipao garment, which first appeared in the 1910s in Shanghai.
Transrapid (a German magnetic levitation train company, constructed the first operational maglev railway in the world, from Shanghai's Long Yang Road subway station to Pudong International Airport.
The Shanghai Municipal Council, created to manage the foreign settlements, held its first annual meeting in 1854.
The talent and passion of Shanghai filmmakers following World War II and the Communist Revolution contributed substantially to the development of the Hong Kong film industry.
Land prices rose substantially, and real estate development became a source of considerable income for Shanghai's westerners, further increasing their dominance of the city's economy.
During this period, Shanghai was known as "The Paris of the East, the New York of the West".
The opium imported to China by the United Kingdom essentially destroyed the cotton industry of Shanghai.
Nearly all registered Shanghai residents are descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, regions that generally speak the same family of Wu Chinese dialects.
The 1949 quake caused eight known deaths, all in Seattle; the 1965 quake caused three deaths in Seattle directly, and one more by heart failure.
Shanghai's film industry went on to blossom during the early 1930s, generating Marilyn Monroe-like stars such as Zhou Xuan, who committed suicide in 1957.
Recent migrants into Shanghai, however, come from all over China, do not speak the local dialect and are therefore forced to use Mandarin as a lingua franca.
Their villas were turned into brothels and gambling houses, and in 1943, British, Americans, and Dutch residents of Shanghai were force-marched to Japanese concentration camps.
During the thirteenth century Shanghai and the surrounding area became a cotton production and manufacturing center and one of China's richest regions.
By 1853, Shanghai was occupied by a triad offshoot of the rebels called the “Small Swords Society.” The fighting which devastated the countryside left the foreign settlements untouched, and many Chinese arrived seeking refuge.
Chiang Kai-shek continuously requested large amounts of money from Shanghai financiers for his projects.
Administratively, Shanghai is one of four municipalities of the People's Republic of China that have provincial-level status.
A neutral organization, the Tong Reng Tan, tried to build up good governance in Shanghai.
Du Yuesheng tried to become the mayor of Shanghai, but was forced to leave the city.
Shanghai's economy is steadily growing at 11 percent and for 2004 the forecast is 14 percent.
The 2000 census put the population of Shanghai Municipality at 16.738 million, including the floating population, which made up 3.871 million.
The cheongsam went along well with the Western overcoat and the scarf, and portrayed an unique East Asian modernity, epitomizing the Shanghai population.
The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, ostensibly to crush the protests of Chinese student against the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent Japanese occupation.
When mobsters stormed the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the police did not interfere because they had been dominated by the mobsters since 1919.
Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government made Shanghai their capital, building large modern Chinese residential areas, with good roads and parking lots for automobiles, north of the foreign concessions.
Today, Shanghai is the biggest and most developed city in mainland China.
Western visitors to Shanghai are greeted with free public parks, manicured to startling perfection, in distinct contrast to the massive industrial installations which reveal China's emerging environmental concerns.
The Pudong district of Shanghai contains intentionally westernized streets (European/American 'feeling' districts) in close proximity to major international trade and hospitality zones.
Shanghai is increasingly a critical center of communication with the Western world.
Andrй Malraux published his novel La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate), in 1933 about the defeat of a communist regime in Shanghai and the choices the losers have to face.
After 1927, Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist government made Shanghai their capital, building large modern Chinese residential areas, with good roads and parking lots for automobiles, north of the foreign concessions.
Shanghai and Hong Kong have recently become rivals over which city is to be the economic center of China.
In 1912, the Xinhai Revolution brought about the establishment of the Republic of China, and Shanghai became the focal point of activities that would eventually shape modern China.
Until 1127, Shanghai was a small fishing village and market town of 12,000 households.
In 1936, Shanghai was one of the largest cities in the world, with three million inhabitants.
Shanghai, situated on the banks of the Yangtze River Delta, is China's largest city.
The nationalist government had no concern for local interests in Shanghai and attempted to impose an autocratic rule.
Shanghai has three passenger railway stations, Shanghai Railway Station, Shanghai West Railway Station and Shanghai South Railway Station.
Han Bangqing (Shanghai Demi-monde, or Flowers of Shanghai) is a novel that follows the lives of Shanghai flower girls and the timeless decadence surrounding them.
The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and instead maintained their own French Concession, located to the south of the International Settlement.
The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence and a town called "Shanghai" in the area.
Socialist writers include: Mao Dun (famous for his Shanghai-set Ziye), Ba Jin, and Lu Xun.