M-whY

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is located on Pudong, on the east side of the Huangpu River. In the past, Pudong was known to have the worst living conditions in the city, where gangsters learned their trade and prostitutes worked the streets. Nowadays, it's become a major business center, a glittering collection of skyscrapers that has led Shanghai past Hong Kong as China's financial capital. Getting there was easy - Shanghai's metro did the job - and after paying the 100 yuan admission fee, I was ready to climb this gaudy 456m piece of work.

The tallest in Asia and third tallest in the world, there are three viewing platforms, all of which were included in my ticket. To my surprise, there was hardly anyone in queue. An elevator whisked me up to the second bauble at 263m. Bright incandescent tones of the Bund were backed by the glow of neon. Everywhere around me, tourists were snapping pictures, some ignorantly using flash. Too bad they'll end up with nothing but the reflection off the windows.

The third bauble, at 350m, brought me eye level with the Jinmao Tower, for a view at a slightly different angle. The windows here were rather dirty, taking away from the whole experience, though I'm not sure how to go about solving this problem. There's no sum of money that would convince me to be a window cleaner at this height. Maybe just wait for Mother Nature to douse it all with heavy rain?

The bauble at 90m was more of the same, except this time, instead of windows, a wire net prevented the clumsy from tumbling overboard. In the end, it was nothing but a look at Shanghai's ever-changing skyline, but I still left with a huge grin on my face. Because that rotten egg smell in the elevators? ...It was me!

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