The miracles created by Shanghainese are more than just the rapid development of building constructions, which is nothing special in China. This city knows how to exert people’s talents. And now, let’s find out how these miracles happened…

      Thirty years ago, Mr. Ni Zhaoxing was just a tea grower from a poor village of Zhejiang Province with a daily income of 0.15 RMB. But now, the 48-years-old Ni and his family earn 20,000,000 euros annually after-tax. Ni is a medium stature strong man with wisdom eyesight and is good at gesture-using. The rich expression in his eyes shows that he is always watching out for opportunities or risks at all times. His fortune has experienced twice “ups and downs”. When he met his wife Gong Jianxin for the first time in 1990, he was nobody while his wife, the daughter of a senior government administrator, was also not satisfied to work in the Bank of China. Thus, they decided to enter into the real-estate industry. Ni recalled that they had no money, no experience and no social network at that time. After 6 years of hard work, they developed their first duplex apartment project, and then they invested the profits from their first project into the second one and so on. In 2000, they marched into Shanghai. “At that moment, the Asian Financial Crisis was just ended; many foreign companies retreated from Shanghai and the price of land dropped down to its lowest record. After doing some research and investigation, we decided to bet all our money on Shanghai. Everybody said that we were crazy…” Ni burst out laughing.

      Zhongrong Group is a family-owned enterprise with only 2 shareholders, which are the chairman, Ni Zhaoxing and his wife. The Group owns a real-estate kingdom, which includes two towers with a size of 70,000 and 100,000 square meters respectively in Pudong; and in the near future, the 3rd tower — Zhongrong Jasper Tower with a height of 250 meters will be built up on the bank of Huangpu River in Lujiazui. The Group also owns a sliver Rolls-Royce limo and sweet tat jade worth up to 10,000,000 euros; all the furniture in his office are handmade royal furniture by senior craftsmen in Forbidden City. In Hangzhou, he is also planning to build an international conference center with an area of 500,000 square meters, designed by French Charpentier Architecture Design Institute with a shape similar to the Palace of Versailles. Mr. Ni plans to invite UN to manage the conference center; WTO to manage the exhibition and trade center; French Lido to manage the performance center; and France Ritz Royal Hotel to manage the hotel. Are these just fantasies? “No, no”, my friend corrected me, “It is just like a child who is making his dream come true!” Like in a fairy tale, a poor starving child who realizes his dream after meeting a fairy.

      Mr. Ni is a profile of Shanghai. His pursuit for the present and future, his unsatisfied curiosity and excellent digesting ability for exotic cultures…All of these has drawn up an extremely exaggerated new city image for Shanghai, an international metropolitan filled with most Chinese features or an international metropolitan with most luxury Chinese features.

      During the recent 30 years, this city’s population has increased from 5 million to 18 million. With overwhelming flow of the reform and opening up, the city’s population has experienced an explosive increase, like floods rushing through the bank, over the mountains and valleys, and smashing everything before it. City buildings are rising to the gray sky. In 1990, the 24-floor Garden Hotel built in 1934 was honored to be the highest in the city. However, since then, over thousands of buildings with more than 30 floors have appeared in the city. Meanwhile, almost 900,000 families have moved out from their old, average size of 3 square meters per person houses with poor environment into the big houses in suburbs. 

      However, the outcome was not as bad as we expected. Comparing to Guangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing and other cities, Shanghai did not become the slave of rough city planning, there are two explanations to this:

      First, during the 80s—the golden days of tube-shaped apartment buildings, Shanghai has a lot of projects, but unable to carry out due to lack of money. As Mrs. Fransowaz Kert from the China Contemporary Architecture Inspection Institute said that, Shanghai’s long-lasting dwelling problem has provided an opportunity for the local residents to improve their living standard and also reserve the foreign architectures that were built during the Colonial Period. The western style architectures that left by other foreign countries are once called as shame of the nation, but now, it has become the pride of Shanghai and the highlight of the city.

      In China, people adore their ancient cultures, but the old stuff is usually deemed as ugly and worthless. However, Shanghai becomes the pioneer to grant new values to those old buildings and applies all kinds of leading ideas to its architectures. For example, Xin Tiandi, which was the high-grand residential area at the beginning of the 20th century, and also the site of 1st conference of Chinese Communist. The place was surrounded by plenty of silk shops, where a silk pajama costs a general employee’s one month salary. The key success of Xin Tiandi is that almost every block in Shanghai wants to build their own “Xin Tiandi” nowadays. 

      Second, Shanghai’s cultural tradition has a long history. As the chief designer of Shanghai Modern Architecture Design Institute and the designer of the famous Shanghai Museum, Mr, Xing Tonghe said, Shanghai’s architecture inherits its own local spirit, which can integrate both of the ancient and modern architecture style from the east and the west, such as the small brick house and the armored concrete towers. Regardless of the size, all the construction projects in Shanghai are public bidding via independent quality supervision organizations to control their qualities. Consequently, more and more international design institutes have come to Shanghai to join the competition. Therefore, it is important that we pay special attention to the details and avoid the irrational plagiarism. Shanghainese are usually penny-pinching and will not echo others without a reason. If Shanghai loses numerous good projects due to their special character, meanwhile, it also avoids the Beijingneses’ boldness of accepting all without asking a reason. It is a unique idea in China and a comprehensive consideration on people’s quality of living. Although the speculation and corruption cannot be erased completely, which compose huge pressure on different sides, the municipal government took a series of related measures in 2003 to reduce the building density of the city, controll the height and extend the usearea of greenbelts. Those measures have directly resulted in a raise of the apartment price; and Shanghai is also the first city in China to implement the policy of old block protection. Now, a size of 27 square kilometers old blocks have been brought into the plan and the size will reach 40 square kilometers in the future…

      Mr. Wu Jiang is the best representative who strives to protect the old blocks in Shanghai. As a professor in city planning major, he canvassed around to stop the crazy occupancy of armored concrete buildings in this city. Now, he is in charge of the Shanghai City Planning Office, reporting directly to the mayor. His job covers the issuance of construction permit certificate, supervision of compliance of construction regulations and he also tries to keep the construction investors and local strong forces under control. He said that we obviously cannot control all the projects. Among 10,000 projects annually, we can only supervise the projects with large scales or in sensitive areas. The chief administrators of each district tend to just go their own ways, Most of them follow by the construction investors since attracting a larger amount of investment funds is their final goal. Nowadays, all the projects must be reported to the City Planning Office to make sure whether it violates the regulations and the validation of construction permit certificate. “We’re in danger,” Mr. Wujiang smiled, “We are often threatened to death, but it is worthy. And Beijing has already realized Shanghai’s city planning is doing better and better.”

     Standing at the People’s Square, facing the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Grand Theatre on the right hand side was designed by French Charpentier Architecture Design Institute; on the left hand side, the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center is being built. When you get closer, you can see a five-story building with luxurious appearance. It has been decorated with imaginary jigsaw puzzles and all kinds of dizzying digits, as it is indulging in its self-admiration. The surrounding environments are not inferior in any respect, you can find everything here, including greenbelts, buses, public entertainment facilities etc. Life is just as splendid as described in the contractors’ advertisments; children are playing in the garden and fathers are driving environmental-friendly cars on the express leading to the picturesque office buildings… In 2020, Shanghai plans to realize the urbanization of a population of 20,000,000, it will be unique for China and even the world. This will not just cover the central area, but also include 11 satellite cities with a capacity of holding 200,000 to 1,000,000 residents. Each satellite city is designed to be a university city, a harbor city, an auto city and so on. From the investment point of view, President Ni has his own way. The government is short of money, therefore it can only invest a maximum of 10% funds on the basic infrastructures, and the rest will be covered by private-owned investing companies and banks. Users are entitled to their own investment costs, for instance, income from the metro-tickets shall be used for paying off the metro-investments; road toll shall used for highway investment and house buyers shall pay for the real estate developers’ investments.