Companion: The All-in-One Guide to Shanghai

Those who have visited Shanghai may have had an illusion-the sur-real feeling of a single city with two different worlds. One is the present-day Shanghai, with skyscrapers, bustling streets and a myriad of spec-tacular sights. The other is the old and romantic Shanghai that lives onin our fantasies. The modem-day Shanghai is a flourishing metropolis ready to em-brace the world and a better future in the new century, while the oldShanghai is the weathered city of our memories, the result of man'sendeavor to build an exotic, opulent and powerful seaside city. Nostalgia is the longing for the past, the yearning for bygone days.Exoticism, on the other hand, is the state of being intriguing and unusual;it opens and inspires the mind, and nourishes our illusions of remote,foreign and mysterious lands.