Monuments to visit Shanghai 上海

Inaugurated in 1998, the Shanghai Opera (Dagejuyuan) was designed by the French architect ARTE-Charpentier. Its architecture incorporates the cultural complexity of a millennium civilization that comes into modernity. It builds on the Chinese myth that the sky is round like the roof and the earth, square like the body of the building. Jacques Chirac welcomed the aesthetic quality of the building and the efforts of architects during his presidential visit in May 1997. South of Renmin Square, at the intersection of Xizang Lu and Yan'an Lu, the Grand World (Dashijie) was Asia's largest amusement centre: a mix of casino, tripot, on three floors. Rebuilt on numerous occasions, the building dates back to 1924; the place is always open to the public.

On more than 100 stands, you will see flowers (freshly cut for some, and others clearly less cool…), pagaille birds (and what racket!) and hundreds of small small animals… Of course, we're going to dig on crickets and their beautiful little cages, or we'll try to learn French to parrots… A great experience, far away from the Shanghai skyscrapers.

The Great Library of Shanghai was inaugurated in December 1996. It is the second largest in China after the Beijing National Library and one of the ten largest in the world: 3,1 ha, 13 million books and manuscripts, some of which have more than 1 400 years of history, 20 reading rooms (Chinese, foreign, electronic, CD-Rom and Internet).