I was reading an article this morning about how the Chinese government is dealing with the fact that Shanghai is sinking every year, including about 4 centimeters per year in the middle of last century. Although it previously was due to groundwater being pulled out at astounding rates, today they think it might also have something to do with the weight of all the buildings. While reading the article I came across this fact:
There are about 10,000 buildings with more than 10 floors in Shanghai, of which 80 percent have been built in the past 10 years.
I have been having a hard time explaining to people just how big Shanghai is, but this is one more statistic that I can add to the "estimated 20 million people" that might give some hint as to the scale we are talking about. Another visual that might help are the pictures we took at the Urban Planning Museum. I haven't figured out how to pepper interesting pictures throughout the text of my blog yet, so you will have to look at the top of the posting for them...
These show a model of Shanghai with all the streets and buildings and the river running through it. I have heard it is sort of an "idealized" Shanghai in that the artists took some creative license with certain areas, but it definitely gives you some idea. Where we are living isn't even included in this model, our neighborhood is literally just off the map, it would be right around where Greg is standing when he took the third picture. Conor, Ryan and I are in the background posing in the second picture. This was a really interesting exhibit, and they had lots of displays and pictures of Shanghai throughout history showing how it has become the city that it is today. All in all, a nice family outing on a rainy Sunday morning, and our first really "touristy" outing in Shanghai.
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