Friday 23 November 2007

Shanghai


click for panorama
Endless city, commerce and industry without bound, twenty million lives squeezed into hundreds of thousands of buildings, expressways choked with automobiles, happiness and rage, fashion and aspiration jumbled with concrete and asphalt, a roaring clamor continuing around the clock, pounding energy and optimism and pride. A river plain transformed into vertical cliffs and canyons. A city created out of nothing in fifteen years. I first came here twenty years ago, when a modern building was a soviet palace. Now there is no limit to the chrome and glass and steel and money spent on raising higher, narrower, stranger buildings. Exhilarating. Exhausting.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I keep looking at these pictures and almost-but-not-quite writing a comment. I like them all but especially the one with you in it.

Anonymous said...

That glancing shot of me was taken by a friend during a late evening walk along the Bundt after a day of meetings, just after popping into an art gallery exhibiting garbage (very literally, cubes of compressed electronic waste that the world exports to China), and luxury goods shops with prices far above my purchasing power.

Anonymous said...

I like the way the lighting makes it look like a stage set - very pretty.