Measuring the population of the world’s largest cities is a complicated and somewhat competitive business.  Whatever method you prefer, at 24 million people Shanghai gets close to the top of everyone’s list.  Getting an impression of such a huge place in a short time isn’t easy.  I recently spoke at a conference in Shanghai (my first time there) and had the opportunity to spend a little more than a day checking out the city.

My first proper look was an early morning, bird’s-eye view when I opened the curtains in my 56th floor room at Le Royal Meridien.  I looked down on the Huangpu river as it twisted through a forest of skyscrapers that stretched as far as I could see.  A few of the buildings – the Shanghai Tower (the tallest in China) and the World Financial Centre, for example – stood out from an otherwise undistinguished mass of tall buildings.  Later in the day, walking along the Bund, I was able to see some of the beautiful historical buildings that grew up at the turn of the 20th century when this was the financial powerhouse of east Asia.

However glossy the center of Shanghai might be, with its hundreds of brand-name stores lining Nanjing Road, within a block or two you can find small and surprisingly quiet streets with tiny shops selling a mass of merchandise.  A little further afield is the French Concession, a residential and retail area set up in the 1840s that’s now very popular with visitors, housing small artisans’ stores and cafés in areas such as Tianzifang.  I ended my day’s stroll in the Jade Buddha Temple,  Most recently established in 1928, it’s a compound of buildings that houses numerous devotional statues, including two beautiful white jade Buddhas brought from Burma.

I’ve visited a few other cities in China: Beijing, Wuhan, Hangzhou, and Nanjing.  Shanghai seemed to me, on the basis of my brief stay, one of the most interesting and distinctive.  Also one of the most paradoxical: bustling yet often calm, huge but occasionally intimate, modern and historic.  If an opportunity arises for a longer visit, I’m certainly going to take it.