The Heritage Foundation has pulled together a fascinating study of Chinese investment — showing just where all of those yuan are heading overseas. (Foreign Policy)
With 66 days until the opening of the World Expo, some pavilions are starting to show their big feats. Here you have the Monaco pavilion, wrapped in an illuminated wave of LED lights. (via Inhabitat)
Photograph by Fritz Hoffmann
Shanghai natives form an urban tribe, set apart from the rest of China by language, customs, architecture, food, and attitudes. Their culture, often called haipai (Shanghai style), emerged from the city’s singular history as a meeting point of foreign merchants and Chi nese migrants. But over the years it has become a hybrid that confounds the very idea of East and West. “In foreigners’ eyes Shanghai is part of ‘mysterious China,’” says Zhou Libo, a local comedian. “In the eyes of other Chinese, Shanghai is part of the outside world.” (National Geographic)
EXH Design was hired to redesign the façades of high-rises in one of the most active urban areas in Shanghai. With the plans of the buildings already halfway through government approval, EXH was allowed little leeway in trying to change the existing plans. Instead, EXH turned their attention to “sculpting” the building’s surface. Taking a geometrical approach, the new façade aims to create a dynamic effect that will become a strong architectural expression for the surrounding areas. (Archdaily)
Terence Lloren, one of the creatives behind Building 173, has taken the concept a step further in his new, self-published book Growing Up With Shanghai. (Shanghaiist)
Shanghainese are living longer, with an average life span of 81.73 years in 2009, creating a new record after 2008’s 81.28, said Shanghai Health Bureau today.
The maternal mortality rate last year was 9.61 in every 100,000, close to the average in developed countries for the first time. The death rate of infants was 6.58 in every 1,000.
