Friends World Program of Long Island University

Hangzhou City

Neighboring Cities

Sometimes referred to as "Shanghai's private garden," Hangzhou is less than two hours away from Shanghai, the largest city in China. While Beijing is the political capital of China, the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai is certainly its economic capital. In fact, in 2010 Shanghai will host the World's Fair. With an entire population of 16.7 million people (and an urban population of 7.5 million), Shanghai residents represent at least fifty ethnic minorities, with half a million Chinese Muslims and over forty-thousand foreign expatriates. Shanghai has indeed reemerged as a real metropolis and truly international city. Once called the "Pearl of the Orient" and "Paris of the Far East" during the first decades of the twentieth century, Shanghai was a thriving cosmopolitan city and home to large communities of colonialists, who lived in foreign concessions ceded to the French, British and Americans in the middle of the 19th century. The area known as the Bund (waitan), still lined with stately brownstone banks and hotels from that era, faces the new economic development zone on the opposite bank of the Pudong River, where some of the world's greatest living architects compete to build its futuristic skyline. Here stand the Oriental Pearl Television Tower, which at 468 meters is the tallest tower in Asia, and the Jin Mao Tower, which at over 420 meters and eighty-eight stories is the tallest skyscraper in China and home to the world's highest hotel, the Grand Hyatt of Shanghai.

Students flying into Shanghai will arrive at the new Shanghai International Airport in Pudong, where a German manufactured magnetic levitation train (the fastest in the world) rockets passengers from this ultra-modern airport to the terminus of the city's subway line in less than eight minutes at a record speed of 430 km/hour. In fact there are plans underway to extend this maglev train all the way to Hangzhou in time for the Shanghai World Fair in 2010, reducing travel time between the two cities to just 27 minutes. Until then, students seeking more than Hangzhou has to offer, will still be able to reach Shanghai in less than two hours by one of the five express trains that depart daily form Hangzhou.

In Shanghai students have ready access to all the amenities and cultural activities any international city of its size can offer, starting with Nanjing Road, a 5.5 km shopping street that is one of the longest walking streets in the world. The Shanghai Museum, located in the heart of the city on People's Square, houses an impressive permanent collection of Chinese art and antiquities and displays several international exhibitions each year, ranging from the paintings and prints of Edvard Munch, the Norwegian father of German expressionism, to the national treasures of ancient Egypt, which in 2003 was the largest exhibition of Egyptian treasures ever assembled outside that country. In May, 2006, the Madame Tussauds Wax Museum opened its sixth museum since 1835 in Shanghai, where you can see the wax likeness of the Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, standing together with Hong Kong action star Jacky Chan and singer, Andy Lau.

The Shanghai Grand Theatre, which opened in 1998 and is designed by the French architect Jean-Marie Charpentier, offers an impressive range of Chinese and international performances, featuring world-class philharmonic orchestras, operas, and ballets, where you are likely to see anything from a cello solo by Yo-yo Ma, a performance by the Irish dance troupe, Riverdance, a musical like Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, or a ballet like the Nutcracker or Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The city also has other important performance venues such as the Shanghai Concert Hall, where violinist Hilary Hahn gives recitals on occasion, and the Shanghai Grand Stage, where in December 2006, septuagenarian Luciano Pavarotti will give his farewell performance to China, and where the Rolling Stones played their first mainland concert on April 8, 2006. The Shanghai Art Museum, located in a landmark building from the 1930s in People's Square, is the foremost international contemporary art museum in China, where the acclaimed artist and leading director of New German cinema, Wim Wenders, displayed his photographs and screened his films in March, 2004.

M on the Bund is located in the historic Nissin Shipping Building, constructed in 1921, and overlooks the scenic colonial waterfront of the Pujiang River. Here students can enjoy inexpensive discounted tickets to Live at the Glamour Bar, a variety of art performances ranging from old style jazz and cabaret to contemporary comedy, and to a salon of arts and culture events called Incidental Sundays, which includes a yearly International Literature Festival, where students can enjoy a glass of wine while listening to a lecture from international figures such as former Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, playwright David Henry Hwang, or travel writer Pico Iyer.

Shanghai also has a thriving underground art scene, with a large number of independent theaters and galleries, and the live music scene here ranges from 1920s Shanghai Jazz to hip-hop, country, blues and bangra. While clubs in the city have recently played host to Jungle Brothers, Kid Koala, and DJ Krush, Norah Jones and Diana Krall have also played some of the larger venues in Shanghai this year.

For tourist information in English 24 hours per day, please call the Shanghai Information Centre: +86-21-962288.

Hangzhou is also a short drive to several ancient water towns in Zhejiang, such as the sleepy ancient fishing village of Xitang, the site where J. J. Abrams filmed part of Mission Impossible III (2006), the first Hollywood film to showcase contemporary Shanghai. Here students can explore its distinctive buildings that date back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and wander along narrow cobbled lanes with covered corridors and across historic stone bridges that span the town's numerous rivers and canals. Hangzhou is less than an hour by bus to the beautiful bamboo forests of Anji, where Ang Lee filmed the most memorable fight scene between Jen (Zhang Ziyi) and Li Mubai (Chow Yun-fat) atop of the forest canopy in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Last updated on Jul 06, 2006

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