New Tales of old Shanghai
Alliance Primary School Kowloon Tong , Lam , Pak Lap – 10
S hanghai is now an international economic city in China ’ s east coast . How did it begin its rise ? My grandma was born in the 1930s . Shanghai began its rise to a huge economic city in the 1950s . Much of my information came from Grandma .
After the Opium War , Western countries all took pieces of Chinese lands and ran it as one of their colonies ( or territories , as Americans called it ). My grandmother lived during this period . At this period , Shanghai is controlled by Western countries , which gave it extreme freedom . Park Hotel is one of the key buildings of finance and prosperity in Shanghai , which held the record for the highest building in Shanghai for fifty years .
“ Rome wasn ’ t built in a day ”, Shanghai ’ s prosperity started to go up as early as in the Ming Dynasty . Then , its main business was fabric . But once it started , it was unstoppable . Even as Shanghai was handed back into Chinese control , its economy still was on the rise . By now , Shanghai ’ s boundaries extended way past the Old City of Shanghai . Wild lands beyond the walls of the Old City were being developed into economic centres and skyscrapers .
In the golden days of Shanghai , it was also developed into a centre of education and learning . Since most people who lived in Shanghai were wealthy , most got an overseas education and learnt English . Around the time of the handover of power and administration back to China , nearly all residents in Shanghai knew a little English . That ’ s why Shanghai became such an important economic city . It was second in trade and global economics only to Hong Kong . Because of its useful port and its well-educated classes , its is a very important economic city even to this day .
Shanghai also has a lot of wealthy people , who makes it full of investors , so a lot companies go there to build factories and building to attract investors . Its culture was also unmistakable . For example , once my maternal grandmother went to visit me and took me to a jewellery shop to by a gold ring for herself . The saleswoman immediately identified her as a Shanghai resident . When my grandmother asked her how she knew it , she said that she identified her walking style and her confidence . From this , we can see that Shanghai definitely isn ’ t the normal metropolis you may know . It is also the core of the Eastern Wu culture .
From my passage , you can see that Shanghai isn ’ t an ordinary city . It is also a culture-mixing and international economic city .