SHANGHAI - Wonders on the waterfrontTravelA stroll along the Bund area of Shanghai is the best way to take in the juxtaposition of futuristic skyscrapers and colonial-era buildings. Shanghai is probably Asia’s greatest man-made phenomenon. Once a small fishing village in Central China’s coastal district, the city was romanticised as the opium den of Asia when the Europeans arrived with gunships and the drug in the early 20th Century. They left behind them the neo-classical and Art Deco buildings that still line the west bank of the Huangpu River and today these old grandes dames stand in direct contrast to the architecturally distinctive and often eccentric futuristic skyscrapers that dominate the Bund business area.

Source: The Nation Bangkok November 23, 2016 04:28 UTC