I have been fortunate enough to visit multiple cities in China and I must say Shanghai is a very impressive city. It has a new, modern, and clean feel to it—along with being HUGE! In fact, Shanghai has the largest population of all the cities in the world. The number of people living in Shanghai totals well over 24 million, based on numbers from 2013!
In the Chinese (Mandarin) language, Shanghai is made up of two characters. “Shang” means above and “hai” means sea, so together they mean “upon the sea.” As you can tell from the name, Shanghai is located on the coast of China at the East China Sea. Another large body of water is there called the Yangtze River, which gives Shanghai a great location for shipping. Did you know Shanghai is the world’s busiest container port? This incredible city has a few other names: Pearl of the Orient, Paris of the East, and The Great Athens of China.
Shanghai is surrounded by the Jiangsu Province and the Zhejiang Province. It is considered a commercial and financial center of mainland China. Make no mistake, Shanghai is a global financial center, but Beijing is the political capital of China.