Olympic Games
Venues-Soccer
Cruising down the Huangpu River
Last Updated: Friday, August 7, 2009 | 2:34 PM ET
Bernice Chan CBC Sports
Shanghai Stadium will play host to the soccer event of the 2008 Olympic Games. (Feng Li/Getty Images) Shanghai has long been considered the Paris of the East. And why not? The famous Bund district is what attracts visitors to the cosmopolitan city, with its old European architecture on one side and its futuristic look across the Huangpu River.
During the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, I took a cruise down the river to check out the city landscape from the water. What was interesting was that all the Chinese tourists wanted to take pictures of the Pudong area, the side with the uncoordinated collection of modern skyscrapers rather than the other side, which reminded them of the city’s western occupation from another century.
To them, Pudong represents the future and Shanghai is the most forward-looking Chinese city. It has the tallest buildings in the country, a teeming mass of more than 18.5 million people, with many young, ambitious up-starts establishing their careers here.
And because of its past, the city seems more open or accepting of Western influences than the capital. There are bilingual signs everywhere, Chinese and English, making it relatively easy for visitors to find their way around.
Shanghai’s massive building boom began in the 1990s and one of the biggest construction projects was the Shanghai Stadium, built in 1997.
The outdoor stadium is mostly used for football matches, and in August will host the football preliminaries for the Olympics. It can hold up to 80,000 people, which is why the venue is also called the “80,000 people’s stadium.” It used to be China’s largest outdoor stadium, but now the National Stadium, or Bird’s Nest in Beijing has taken that title.
However, the stadium was in the news in March this year when superstar David Beckham was in Shanghai with the Los Angeles Galaxy in a friendly match with players from China and Hong Kong. There were complaints about the pitch in the stadium.
Ruud Gullit, head coach of the Galaxy said: “The pitch is in bad shape and dangerous, there were stones and bones, shells, everything was on the pitch. It is pretty difficult to play on it, so I hope they can clean it…”
After that not-so-polite warning, the pitch was cleaned up, but really – what were bones and shells doing on the field? Was there a beach barbecue on the pitch we didn’t hear about?
Nevertheless, by the time the Games roll around, most of the city – including the stadium – will be wired. So if fans are dying to show everyone pictures of themselves at the Olympics in Shanghai, they can send them while they’re at the game.
It’s another reason why Shanghai is China’s city of the future.
