Shanghai's Skyscrapers

Being the largest city in the largest country in the world, Shanghai has a lot of people. Where do you put them all? In really big buildings.

One of the fun things for us has been looking out our windows and watching the the skyscrapers being built day-by-day. In some ways it's like living in a Bob the Builder episode just watching everything that is involved.

The three "big" big buildings in Shanghai are within a 10-minute walk from our place: the Pearl Tower, Jin Mao, and the World Finance Center.

When the World Finance Center was competed last October, it was the world's second tallest skyscraper, second only to Taibei 101 in Taiwan. Here's a depiction of the world's biggest buildings... the black buildings are completed, the red are under construction.

As you may be able to see from the picture above, the World Finance Center actually has the highest occupied floors in the world. The observation deck is on the 101st floor, in the top of the "can opener" shape of the building.

I hadn't been to the top of the World Finance Center, so Bryan and I decided to go together.

Walking to the WFC, we saw that the window cleaners were working that day. You can see various cranes extended from the building...

And here are the crazy window washers doing their job. You can see the Pearl Tower in the lower right corner of the picture. This is on the 95th floor...

Going up to the 101st floor, we could look down to see how the window washers hang from their cart as they wash the windows

Bryan on the top floor with the Pearl Tower and Puxi in the background...

Something you don't see everyday... getting off the elevator on the 100th floor.

A view from the top... looking down on Jin Mao and the Pearl Tower... along the river on the other side is the Bund.

See the two big buildings on the right? Those two buildings were two of the Shanghai skyscrapers featured in the movie Mission Impossible III, where Tom Cruise jumped ("fulcrumed") from the building on the left onto the triangle-shaped building on the right.

Haven't seen MI3, yet? If you want to see a pretty sight of Shanghai at night, get the movie and jump to the last half-hour of the movie. After hanging out in Shanghai, Tom Cruise's chase went out to a water town as well, although the movie depicted the water town as being in downtown Shanghai.

Looking down and seeing "our" shadow

Close-up of Jin Mao. You can see it's giant crane on a rail to move it around the building. You can also see their window washers are out working...

The observation deck on the 101st floor is designed pretty slick. The windows slope out so it gives you a leaning/falling sensation as you look out the sides. The middle of the deck has a glass bottom...

Another view from the top, looking to the south of Shanghai. Do you see the brown buildings with the red roofs at the bottom of the picture? That's our apartment complex...

Zooming in on our building... ours is the tallest brown building in the picture, there on the right.

But I need to get a big telephoto lens. I called Morgan while up here and she and Chelsie were out on the porch while I was taking these pictures. When I cropped in on the porch, I could see two human figures, but definitely couldn't tell who it was. Maybe that's enough justification to buy the next lens (or at least borrow a friend's for the day).

Walking back from the WFC to our place, we walked right past the building site for Shanghai's next tallest building, called the Shanghai Tower. The construction zone of the Shanghai Tower is behind the wall (our apartment complex are the brown buildings with the green glass behind).

Pictures on the wall show what things will look like when the building is completed in 2012.

The Shanghai Tower was not included in the depiction above showing the world's tallest skyscrapers. When completed, it will be the world's second tallest, second to the building in Dubai.

I really like this next picture of the Shanghai Tower because it shows our building... the "little" building all the way on the right. We live on the 31st and 32nd floor of a 33-story building. How can a 33-story building look so small? Only in Shanghai!

Sometimes "things happen" in the construction of these new buildings. While Bryan and I were talking in our living room, I noticed huge black smoke billowing that could be seen from our patio, so we went out to see what was going on...You can see flames in this next picture.

Do you see the white buildings with the red roofs? That's where the migrant construction workers live. They come from the countryside and work here for 50 weeks of the year living in those temporary dormitory buildings. One of these had caught fire and completely burned down.

While we're looking at the view from our patio, flashback to when we moved in to see how things have changed...

See all those new buildings in the picture above compared to the picture below? Soon our completely unobstructed view of the Pearl Tower will be completely blocked. Must be time for us to move...

The WFC when we moved here in 2007...

The view from our porch back then...

and now...