Pocket Guide Shanghai

Berlitz Pocket Guide: Shanghai covers all the city's major sights, area by area, in an easily navigable format. The guide also contains background historical information, advice on shopping and entertainment and the low-down on eating out. There is an A-Z of practical information, listings of recommended hotels and restaurants and useful expressions in Mandarin Chinese, as well as special features focussing on Chinese culture and activities for visitors. Maps show Shanghai city centre and excursions further afield. The book is lavishly illustrated with dozens of colour photographs.

In a single decade Shanghai has transformed itself from a gritty, dilapidated metropolis into a trendy, modern mega-city, studded with skyscrapers and Starbucks. At first glance it hardly seems a Chinese city at all. As legions of steel, concrete and glass poured across Shanghai's cityscape in the mid-1990s, Shanghai ruthlessly redrew itself into the richest, trendiest, most modern destination in the People's Republic of China (PRC), and it is now setting its sights on becoming the most important city in all of Asia.
Yet Shanghai's transformation is hardly complete. The city remains a massive work in progress, and its rough edges are never entirely out of view. Around the corner from the latest fast-food hamburger joint or designer-label boutique lies the local bird and flower market, its wares pitched in the street, blocking traffic. Above the six-lane superhighway cutting through the heart of the city, a blind beggar plays his erhu (Chinese-style violin) on the pedestrian flyover. To the wandering traveller, the old Shanghai frequently reappears, its ways and fragrances unlike those of any city in the West.