Shanghai: City of Contrasts

Ben writes:
Though today we sit in the Red Lantern House Hostel in Beijing, we are here to tell you about our 72 hours in Shanghai. Seriously, city of contrasts. There is less to do there in the Great Wall / Mao's Tomb kind of way, but instead you get to witness an incredibly burgeoning city. Being in Shanghai lends great credence to the notion that China will, at least economically, be the next world superpower. There is neither time nor space for every astounding detail, but here are some telling moments, at least.
Getting from the airport to the shuttle bus to the subway to our hostel told us less about China than about the fact that we don't speak Chinese. Fortunately, there is a good amount of English on all the important signs in town. But despite this, we spent a lot of time gesturing and repeating simple English phrases while generous kind people did their best to point us on the way. If you stand still and look lost, someone will either say "taxi, hotel, taxi" at you, or actually come over and help. We've gotten a lot of both.
If you do not look lost, you still often get "watch, shoes, ladybag," but we also had the pleasant experience of getting into conversations with Chinese students, one group of whom brought us to a traditional tea ceremony. We barely got to ask them anything, as they were so full of questions about the US, and about us. The tea was great, and we learned a little about tea traditions, too. Good one.
Ok, some burgeoning city stuff. As we rode the shuttle bus in from the sticks, we first went though what one guy we met describes as "rural industrial" Shanghai, which is what it sounds like, and occupies a fair amount of the land outside the urban center. Next came the very tall apartment buildings, in clusters of 3-8 identical buildings. These continue all the way in, but other city things fill in around them.
If you walk on the Bund, the touristy waterfront on the river, you will see on the west coast colonial era office buildings, all stone columns and such. On the east coast are incredible huge postmodern office buildings, bizarrely shaped and lit with neon and gigantic tv screens. None of that was there 15 years ago, we are told.
The urban planning museum has a very impressive scale model of the city, probably 20 meters across. It also has extensive displays on all the development the city is planning. There are many claims of being eco-friendly, and designed with human needs in mind, a contrast to the concrete towers of the Communist era (how Communist is China now? I really don't know. Maybe we'll figure it out). I have never seen a city with such vast ambitions for itself.
We spent one day walking from the French Concession, a pleasant neighborhood with nice trees on the streets and a lot of music stores, to Old Town. Old Town is a decaying mess of streets and alleys packed with fruit vendors, food sellers, restaurants, some book stores, clothes, I don't know what else. There is a lot of demolition, some construction, meat cooling in water buckets on the sidewalk, motorcycles and bikes zipping between people, cars honking through tight passages. It is a lot dirtier than most of Shanghai. It is apparently disappearing to new development, and while part of me wants to say no! it is so special and unique, one should also recognize that it is kind of squalid, and most of it would not be up to code in the US. I'll be interested to see where it goes.
Minutes away from Old Town are vast wide streets with huge pedestrian overpasses, and trendy expensive designers stores around. We got free Bailey's and cheese served by Chinese women at an Ireland tourism promotion thing.
That same day, we passed though several fantastic parks. Shanghai has the best quality+quantity of parks of probably any city I've seen, as evidenced by the fact that people use them! There are brightly colored public exercise machines that everyone is on, people playing cards and what appears to be backgammon, doing movement exercises, sitting and talking. Really good public space.
The public transport is really good, too. In conclusion, Shanghai is a city of contrasts.

Today in Beijing, we split the day between the Forbidden City, and the twisting alley-streets, called hutongs. Tomorrow we're going to the Great Wall!