A Shanghai Gallery

If you don’t like skyscrapers and endless city lights, look away.

Shanghai seems like the vision we had of the post modern future back in the 80s. I couldn’t help but think of Bladerunner while walking around Shanghai at night. At street level Shanghai can be dark and grimy, but above you the colors are neon electric. It can feel like the most modern city in the world, or like you’re in going back in time to Shanghai’s colonial era.

Shanghai is really something special. It might just be the most exciting city in the world right now; it’s the head of China’s new world empire, growing faster than Manhattan in its golden era and stretching further than the eye can see. It’s a city saturated with urban chaos, where you can find cluttered street markets of old, and international finance centers of new. Walk along the Bund, and you’ll see the architectural remnants of when Shanghai was a booming western trade colony within China. Across the river, Pudong, just 20 years ago was undeveloped land. And now, It has one of the world’s most impressive skylines.

At street level, you get the sense that everything is moving. The pedestrians compete with the scooters and the sales carts for control of the sidewalks. The streets are a dangerous endeavor for anybody looking to drive.  Above that, with some elevation, you can watch Shanghai go on for miles and miles. It’s an army of high-rises and neon lights – straight out of a 80s sci-fi.  It’s hardly inviting, but get to know Shanghai, and you might not want to leave.

Here is the gallery