Shanghai · The Tower That Was Built Before the District
Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠)
A television tower finished in 1994, when the district around it was still mostly warehouses and farmland. Everything else in that skyline came afterwards.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A 468-metre television tower in Lujiazui, Pudong, with observation levels and a city history museum in its base |
|---|---|
| Where | On the Pudong bank of the Huangpu, directly opposite the Bund |
| Opened | 1994. Construction ran from 1991, and for most of the 1990s it stood almost alone on that side of the river |
| The design | Eleven spheres of different sizes strung on three columns, a form the architects took from a Tang line about large and small pearls falling onto a jade plate |
| Booking | Tiered tickets by how high you go. Book online in advance; the queue at the door on a weekend is the main cost of visiting |
| Time needed | Two hours for the tower and the museum. Half a day if you add the riverfront |
| Getting there | Lujiazui station on line 2, or the ferry across from the Bund, which is the better arrival |
| Language | Full English signage. This is one of the easiest sites in China to do alone |
Why Go
A Date, Standing Up
1. It marks when Pudong started
Until 1990 the east bank of the Huangpu was godowns, workshops and low housing, and Shanghai people had a saying about preferring a bed in Puxi to a room in Pudong. The decision to develop the east bank was taken that year, and this tower was the first thing built to announce it. Photographs from the mid-1990s show it standing over an almost empty plain.
Everything that now makes the Lujiazui skyline famous arrived later: Jin Mao in 1999, the World Financial Center in 2008, Shanghai Tower in 2015. The tower is the fixed point they were all built around, which is why it still reads as the centre of the picture even though it is now the shortest of the four.
2. The museum underneath is better than the view
The base holds a museum of Shanghai’s urban history, and it is unusually good: full-scale street reconstructions, trams, shopfronts and interiors from the treaty-port decades, with enough English to follow. Most visitors ride to the top and leave without going in, which gets the value of the building backwards.
The observation levels do what they do. There is a glass floor at the lower one, a higher capsule, and a revolving restaurant in between. On a clear day the view down the river is worth the lift; on a hazy one, which is common, it is not.
The catch. Three taller towers with better observation decks are now within a few hundred metres, and the deck near the top of Shanghai Tower is the one most visitors prefer. The strongest view of the Oriental Pearl is from the Bund, looking across, and that one is free.
Orientation
Which Ticket, and in What Order
Tickets are sold by how far up you go, and the museum in the base is usually bundled with the cheaper tiers. Doing the museum first and the lift afterwards makes the view legible: the street reconstructions downstairs are of the city you then look out over.
The ferry from the Bund side costs almost nothing and takes a few minutes. Arriving on the water and walking up is a better introduction to Lujiazui than coming out of the metro underneath it.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Book ahead, go early
Queues at the base build through the morning and stay built. A slot before ten on a weekday is a different experience from one at two on a Saturday.
Check the air first
Visibility varies enormously. If the far bank looks soft from the Bund, the view from 259 metres will be worse, and the museum is the better use of the ticket that day.
The free view is across the river
The Bund promenade looks straight at the tower and costs nothing. Many visitors do that at dusk and skip the lift entirely, which is a defensible plan.
Do not skip the basement
The Shanghai urban history museum is in the base and is the most substantial thing in the building. It takes about an hour and is well translated.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| October to November | The clearest air of the year and comfortable walking weather along both banks | The first week of October is the national holiday and Lujiazui is full |
| March to May | Mild, and the riverside parks are worth the walk between sites | Rain is frequent and haze can sit over the river for days |
| June to September | Long daylight and the night lighting comes on late, which suits an evening visit | Hot, humid, and the typhoon window runs through late summer |
| December to February | Thinner crowds and often the sharpest long views of the year | Cold and damp, and the wind on the riverfront is worse than the temperature suggests |
Context
Why a Television Tower Got to Be the Symbol
Shanghai spent the 1980s watching Shenzhen grow while its own industry aged. The central decision in 1990 to open Pudong reversed that, and the city needed something visible to mark it. A broadcast tower was the available answer: it had a real function, it could be built quickly on soft ground, and it would be seen from the whole of the old city across the water.
The siting was the argument. Putting it directly opposite the Bund meant that the nineteenth century waterfront, which is what foreigners had always photographed, now had something facing it. Every picture of old Shanghai taken after 1994 has the new city in the background whether the photographer wanted it or not.
That worked so well that the tower became the shorthand for the whole city, and it has kept the job through two rounds of being overtopped. It is a reasonable illustration of how quickly this bank of the river changed: a building that had nothing near its own height is now the low one in its own group.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · 63 km
Zhouzhuang (周庄)
A canal town in southern Jiangsu, bridges and waterfront houses on a grid of channels. The first of these towns to be opened up for visitors, and it shows in the crowds.
Spot · 66 km
Xitang (西塘)
Another canal town, distinguished by long covered walkways along the water that keep the streets usable in rain.
Spot · 111 km
Wuzhen (乌镇)
The most thoroughly managed of the canal towns, with the east and west sections ticketed separately and the western one open at night.
Where to Base
Shanghai (上海)
The tower is a two-hour stop inside a city that takes a week. Lujiazui around it is the financial district and empties in the evening; the Bund across the water, the former concession streets behind it, and the lane housing further west are where the city is worth walking.
If you have one day, the pairing that works is the museum in the tower base in the morning and the old city on foot in the afternoon, with the ferry between them.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · 1 hr
The urban history museum
Reconstructed streets, trams and interiors from the treaty-port decades, in the base of the tower. The part of the building most visitors miss.
On site · 45 min
The observation levels
A glass floor at the lower deck and a capsule higher up. Worth it when the air is clear and not worth it when it is not.
Free · 30 min
The ferry, then the Bund at dusk
Cross on the public ferry, walk the promenade as the lighting comes on, and look back at the tower from the side it was designed to be seen from.
Worth two hours, mostly for the museum in the base rather than the view from the top. If you are choosing one high deck in Shanghai, the one in Shanghai Tower is higher and newer. If you are choosing one view of the Oriental Pearl, take it from the Bund at dusk and spend the ticket money on dinner.
Plan a Shanghai Trip That Uses the City Properly
Tell us your dates and what you are after, and our local team will build the route: the tower and the urban history museum under it, the Bund and the concession streets on foot, and the canal towns within an hour of the city.