Environment
[edit]Parks and resorts
Shanghai's parks offer some reprieve from the urban jungle. Due to the scarcity of play space for children, nearly all parks have a children's section. Fuxing Park, in the former French Concession of Shanghai, features formal French-style gardens and is surrounded by high end bars and cafes. Zhongshan Park in northwestern central Shanghai is famous for its monument of Chopin, the tallest statue dedicated to the composer in the world. Built in 1914 as Jessfield Park, it once contained the campus of St. John's University, Shanghai's first international college; today, it is known for its extensive rose and peony gardens, a large children's play area, and as the location of an important transfer station on the city's metro system. One of the newest is in the Xujiahui area - Xujiahui Park, built in 1999 on the former grounds of the Great Chinese Rubber Works Factory and the EMI Recording Studio (now La Villa Rouge restaurant). The park has a man-made lake with a sky bridge running across the park, and offers a pleasant respite for Xujiahui shoppers.
The Shanghai Disneyland Resort Project was approved by the government on 4 November 2009.[61] It is currently under construction. The resort is planned to be operational by 2013.[62] A $4.4 billion theme park and resort in Pudong will have a castle that will be the biggest among Disney's resorts.[63]
[edit]Environmental protection
Public awareness of the environment is growing, and the city is investing in a number of environmental protection projects. A 10-year, US$1 billion cleanup of Suzhou Creek, which runs through the city-centre, was expected to be finished in 2008,[64] and the government also provides incentives for transportation companies to invest in LPG buses and taxis. Air pollution in Shanghai is low compared to other Chinese cities, but the rapid development over the past decades means it is still high on worldwide standards. The government has moved almost all factories within downtown to either outskirts of Shanghai or the neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces in the last two decades. In addition, several parks have been built in the city. As a result, Shanghai's air quality has been steadily improving since 1990s.[65]
[edit]Culture
Because of Shanghai's status as the cultural and economic centre of East Asia for the first half of the twentieth century, it is popularly seen as the birthplace of everything considered modern in China. It was in Shanghai, for example, that the first motor car was driven and the first train tracks and modern sewers were laid. It was also the intellectual battleground between socialist writers who concentrated on critical realism, which was pioneered by Lu Xun (鲁迅), Mao Dun (茅盾), Nien Cheng and the famous French novel by André Malraux,Man's Fate, and the more "bourgeois", more romantic and aesthetically inclined writers, such as Shi Zhecun (施蛰存), Shao Xunmei (邵洵美), Ye Lingfeng (葉靈鳳) and Eileen Chang (张爱玲).
[edit]Language
Most Shanghai residents are the descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, regions whose population, in general, also speak Wu Chinese. In the past decades, many migrants from other areas of China not mentioned above have come to Shanghai for work. They often cannot speak the local language and therefore use Mandarin as alingua franca.
The vernacular language is Shanghainese, a dialect of Wu Chinese, while the official language nationwide is Mandarin. The local language is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, and is thus an inseparable part of the Shanghainese identity. The modernShanghainese language is based on the Suzhou dialect of Wu, the prestige dialect of Wu spoken within the Chinese city of Shanghai prior to the modern expansion of the city, the Ningbo dialect of Wu, and the dialect of Shanghai's traditional areas now within the Hongkou, Baoshan and Pudong districts, which is simply called "the local tongue" (本地话). It is influenced to a lesser extent by the languages of other nearby regions from which large numbers of people have migrated to Shanghai since the 20th century, and includes a significant number of terms borrowed from European languages. The prevalence of Mandarin fluency is generally higher for those born after 1949 than those born before, while the prevalence of English fluency is higher for people who received their secondary and tertiary education before 1949 than those who did so after 1949 and before the 1990s.
[edit]Museums
Shanghai boasts several museums of regional and national importance. The Shanghai Museum of art and history has one of the best collections of Chinese historical artifacts in the world, including important archaeological finds since 1949. The Shanghai Art Museum, located in the former Shanghai Race Club building in the People's Square, is a major art museum holding both permanent and temporary exhibitions. The Shanghai Natural History Museum is a large scale natural history museum. In addition, there is a variety of smaller, specialist museums, some housed in important historical sites such as the site of theProvisional Government of the Republic of Korea and the site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
[edit]Cinema
Besides literature, Shanghai was also the birthplace of Chinese cinema and theater. China’s first short film, The Difficult Couple (難夫難妻, Nanfu Nanqi, 1913), and the country’s first fictional feature film, An Orphan Rescues His Grandfather (孤兒救祖記, Gu'er jiu zuji, 1923) were both produced in Shanghai. These two films were very influential, and established Shanghai as the centre of Chinese film-making. Shanghai’s film industry went on to blossom during the early 1930s, generating Marilyn Monroe-like stars such as Zhou Xuan. Another film star, Jiang Qing, went on to become Madame Mao Zedong. The talent and passion of Shanghainese filmmakers following World War II and the Communist revolution in China contributed enormously to the development of the Hong Kong film industry. Many aspects of Shanghainese popular culture ("Shanghainese Pops") were transferred to Hong Kong by the numerous Shanghainese emigrants and refugees after the Communist Revolution. The movie In the Mood for Love, which was directed by Wong Kar-wai (a native Shanghainese himself), depicts one slice of the displaced Shanghainese community in Hong Kong and the nostalgia for that era, featuring 1940s music by Zhou Xuan.
[edit]Arts
The Shanghai School (海上画派, Haishang Huapai, which is shortened to 海派, Haipai) is a very important Chinese school of traditional arts during the Qing Dynasty and the whole of the twentieth century. Under efforts of masters from this school, traditional Chinese art reached another climax and continued to the present in forms of the "Chinese painting" (中国画) or guohua (国画) for short. The Shanghai School challenged and broke the literati tradition of Chinese art, while also paying technical homage to the ancient masters and improving on existing traditional techniques. Members of this school were themselves educated literati who had come to question their very status and the purpose of art, and had anticipated the impending modernisation of Chinese society. In an era of rapid social change, works from the Shanghai School were widely innovative and diverse, and often contained thoughtful yet subtle social commentary. The most well-known figures from this school are Qi Baishi (齊白石), Ren Xiong (任熊), Ren Yi (任伯年),Zhao Zhiqian (赵之谦), Wu Changshuo (吴昌硕), Sha Menghai (沙孟海, calligraphist), Pan Tianshou (潘天寿), Fu Baoshi (傅抱石) andWang Zhen (Wang Yiting) (王震). In literature, the term was used in the 1930s by some May Fourth Movement intellectuals, notable ones being Zhou Zuoren and Shen Congwen, as a derogatory label for the literature produced in Shanghai at the time. They argued that so-called Shanghai School literature was merely commercial and therefore did not advance social progress. This became known as the Jingpai (Beijing School) versus Haipai (Shanghai School) debate.
Songjiang School (淞江派) is a small painting school during the Ming Dynasty. It is commonly considered as a further development of the Wu School, or Wumen School (吴门画派), in the then cultural centre of the region, Suzhou. Huating School (华亭派) was another important art school during the middle to late Ming Dynasty. Its main achievements were in traditional Chinese painting, calligraphy and poetry, and especially famous for its Renwen painting (人文画). Dong Qichang (董其昌) is one of the masters from this school.
[edit]Fashion
Other Shanghainese cultural artifacts include the cheongsam (Shanghainese: zansae), a modernisation of the traditional Chinese/Manchurian qipao (Chinese: 旗袍). This contrasts sharply with the traditional qipao, which was designed to conceal the figure and be worn regardless of age. The cheongsam went along well with the western overcoat and the scarf, and portrayed a unique East Asian modernity, epitomizing the Shanghainese population in general. As Western fashions changed, the basic cheongsam design changed, too, introducing high-neck sleeveless dresses, bell-like sleeves, and the black lace frothing at the hem of a ball gown. By the 1940s, cheongsams came in transparent black, beaded bodices, matching capes and even velvet. And, later, checked fabrics became also quite common. The 1949 Communist Revolution ended the cheongsam and other fashions in Shanghai. However, the Shanghainese styles have seen a recent revival as stylish party dresses. The fashion industry has been rapidly revitalizing in the past decade. Like Shanghai's architecture, local fashion designers strive to create a fusion of western and traditional designs, often with innovative if uncontroversial results.
[edit]Sports
Shanghai is home to several professional football teams, including Shanghai Shenhua of theChinese Super League, which is one of the China's most popular and most successful football clubs. Shanghai owns a basketball team as well in the Chinese Basketball Association, the Shanghai Sharks, which developed Yao Ming before he entered the NBA. Shanghai also has an ice hockey team, China Dragon, and the baseball team, Shanghai Golden Eagles, which plays in the China Baseball League.
Shanghai is the hometown of many outstanding and well-known Chinese professional athletes, such as the basketball player Yao Ming, the 110-meters hurdler Liu Xiang and the table tennis player Wang Liqin.
Beginning in 2004, Shanghai started hosting Chinese Grand Prix, one round of the Formula One World Championship. The race was staged at the Shanghai International Circuit. In 2010, Shanghai also became the host city of German Touring Car Masters (DTM), which raced in street circuit in Pudong.
Shanghai also holds ATP Masters 1000 tennis series and HSBC Golf Championship every year.
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