Shanghai

 

The 18 districts and 1 county that make up the Municipality of Shanghai

 

Attractions in Shanghai:

 

Southern "Han"

 

Shanghai

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

Shanghai (上海) is the largest city in China and the largest city proper in the world, with a population of nearly 19 million.

Originally a fishing and textiles town, Shanghai grew to importance in the 19th century due to its favorable port location and as one of the cities opened to foreign trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. The city flourished as a center of commerce between east and west, and became a multinational hub of finance and business by the 1930s. After 1990, the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in intense re-development and financing in Shanghai, and in 2005 Shanghai became the world's largest cargo port. Shanghai will hold the Expo 2010, the largest event to be held in China since the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The city is a tourist destination renowned for its historical landmarks such as the Bund and City God Temple, its modern and ever-expanding Pudong skyline including the Oriental Pearl Tower. Today, Shanghai is the largest center of commerce and finance in mainland China, and has been described as the "showpiece" of the world's fastest-growing major economy

 

Geopgraphy

Shanghai sits on the Yangtze River Delta on China's eastern coast, and is roughly equidistant from Beijing and Hong Kong. The municipality as a whole consists of a peninsula between the Yangtze and Hangzhou Bay, China's third largest island Chongming, and a number of smaller islands. It is bordered on the north and west by Jiangsu Province, on the south by Zhejiang Province, and on the east by the East China Sea. The city proper is bisected by the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze. The historic center of the city, the Puxi area, is located on the western side of the Huangpu, while a new financial district, Pudong, has developed on the eastern bank.

Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate and experiences four distinct seasons. In winter, cold northerly winds from Siberia can cause nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing, although most years there are only one or two days of snowfall. Summer in Shanghai is very warm and humid, with occasional downpours or freak thunderstorms. The city is also susceptible to typhoons, none of which in recent years has caused considerable damage

 

Languages

Most Shanghainese residents are the descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, regions that generally also speak Wu Chinese. In the past decades, many migrants from other areas of China have come to Shanghai for work. They often cannot speak the local dialect and therefore use Mandarin as a lingua franca.

The vernacular language is Shanghainese, a dialect of Wu Chinese, while the official language is Standard Mandarin. The local dialect is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, and is an inseparable part of the Shanghainese identity. The modern Shanghainese dialect is based on the Suzhou dialect of Wu, the prestige dialect of Wu spoken within the Chinese city of Shanghai prior to the modern expansion of the city, the Ningbo dialect of Wu, and the dialect of Shanghai's traditional areas now within the Hongkou, Baoshan and Pudong districts, which is simply called "Bendihua", or "the local dialect". It is influenced to a lesser extent by the dialects of other nearby regions from which large numbers of people have have migrated to Shanghai since the 20th century. Nearly all Shanghainese under the age of 40 can speak Mandarin fluently. Fluency in foreign languages is unevenly distributed. Most senior residents who received a university education before the revolution, and those who worked in foreign enterprises, can speak English. Those under the age of 26 have had contact with English since primary school, as English is taught as a mandatory course starting from the first grade.

 

Demographics

The population of Shanghai is 19,213,200. The 2000 census put the population of Shanghai Municipality at 16.738 million, including the migrant population, which made up 3.871 million. Since the 1990 census the total population had increased by 3.396 million, or 25.5%. Males accounted for 51.4%, females for 48.6% of the population. 12.2% were in the age group of 0–14, 76.3% between 15 and 64 and 11.5% were older than 65. As of 2008, the population of long-term residents reached 18.88 million, including an officially registered permanent population of 13.71 million, and 4.79 million of registered long-term migrants from other provinces, many from Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang Provinces. According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, there were 133,340 foreigners in Shanghai in 2007. In addition, there are a large number of people from Taiwan for business (estimates vary from 350,000 to 700,000). By 2009, the South Korean communities in Shanghai also increased to more than 70,000. The average life expectancy in 2006 was 80.97 years, 78.67 for men and 82.29 for women. Average annual disposable income of Shanghai residents, based on the first three quarters of 2009, is 21,871 RMB.