The world's greatest houses of finance and commerce descended on Shanghai in the 1930s. The place had the tallest buildings in Asia, and more motor vehicles on its streets than the rest of China put together. Shanghai became a byword for exploitation and vice, with its countless opium dens, gambling joints and brothels. Guarding it all were the American, French and Italian marines, British Tommies and Japanese bluejackets.

In 1949 the Communists put the foot down and began eradicating slums, rehabilitating hundreds of thousands of opium addicts and stamping out child and slave labour. For the West, the Shanghai party was over.

By the 1990s, the wheel had turned full circle. Invitations went out again to capitalist business interests as the central government hunted foreign capital to help reinvent this whirlwind metropolis - and met with some success. By the mid-1990s more than half the world's high-rise cranes were looming over Shanghai.

Today the city continues to grow apace, with new underground stations, highways crisscrossing the city, the most modern stock exchange in the world, a swish new airport, two giant bridges and a whole new city in Pudong. Perhaps no city in the world is as futuristic, and Shanghai has become the very symbol of China's rise to economic powerhouse status. It's thought that Shanghai will overtake Hong Kong as an industrial and financial capital within one or two decades. However, despite the growth and international investment, poverty is still prevalent.