Smith, Greg dot com

"The Paris of the East"

Monday, October 6, 2008 at 07:00AM

That's what Shanghai, China was known as during the 1920's when it became one of the most powerful commercial, banking and artistic cities in Asia.

As of Monday morning I'm on a plane to Shanghai for a week-long business trip. I could upload my photos and make a some sort of video tour to give WTH readers a sense of what the city is like.

Here's a panorama shot of the famous "Bund" in Shanghai. The Bund is the 18th century waterfront region, now one of the most fasionable waterfront districts in the world (click to enlarge it):

As of one month ago (it opened in August 2008) Shanghai has the (currently) tallest building in the world, the Shanghai World Financial Center (click to enlarge). The Burj Dubai will surpass it when it opens next year (click to enlarge)

Or I could let a hot and fancy super-model named "Delphine" give you a tour instead. I know, I know: no contest. Hey, I'd rather take a tour with Delphine than me, and I'm me. Or something.

Anyway, check out Shanghai:

This week the posts will all have something to do with Chinese history. Think of it as sort of like Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. I've prewritten them and scheduled them to auto-upload. Don't know how much I'll be able to interact with the WTH site this week, what with all the excitement of Shanghai and the lack of sleep, so forgive me if I'm slow to respond to comments or email.