[photopress:Pearl_Tower.jpg,full,alignright]Shanghai is crowded with visitors. Expect more. Last year there were over six million of them. In the year of Shanghai World Expo 2010 there will probably be 10 million which will be something of a test for the city’s infrastructure and will make Shanghai the largest tourist attraction in China. Hotels will be bursting at the seams. Which is probably why there has been such a surge of investment in hotels and hotel buildings.
No other city on the Chinese mainland, including Beijing, has ever attracted six million overseas tourists in a single year, so 10 million puts Shanghai right ahead of every where else in China.
Although Shanghai lacks, perhaps, the cultural treasures of Beijing it has its attractions. For example, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, although not considered by everyone to be the epitome of classical architecture, is second only to the Eiffel Tower in Paris in terms of numbers of people who visit it each year, and has become a symbol of Shanghai.
Incidentally, there are those who consider the Eiffel Tower the ugliest monument in Paris and droves of Parisian citizens left the city at its construction in protest to its ugliness. You simply cannot please everyone.
Source: China Daily
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