China: Shanghai Museum (Shanghai Bowuguan) in People's Park (Renmin Gongyuan) with surrounding skyscrapers, Shanghai

Shanghai Museum holds more than 120,000 artifacts representing almost five millennia of continuous Chinese civilization. The Building was designed by Shanghai architect Xing Tonghe to represent a ding, or ancient three-legged bronze vessel. It also incorporates the sacred geometry of Yuanqiu, the circular altar at the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan) in Beijing, with a square base (representing the earth) surmounted by a circular superstructure (representing heaven). It was completed in 1996, and has five floors with a total area of more than 39,200sq.m (420,000 sq ft).

Shanghai began life as a fishing village, and later as a port receiving goods carried down the Yangzi River. From 1842 onwards, in the aftermath of the first Opium War, the British opened a ‘concession’ in Shanghai where drug dealers and other traders could operate undisturbed. French, Italians, Germans, Americans and Japanese all followed. By the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was a boom town and an international byword for dissipation. When the Communists won power in 1949, they transformed Shanghai into a model of the Revolution.

Copyright:

CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

David Henley

Credit:

Pictures From Asia