From Marsh to Miracles

When guests from around the world arrived at the Shanghai Pudong International Airport recently to participate in the Third China International Import Expo (CIIE), few could have imagined that this bustling aviation hub on the bank of the Yangtze River used to be a tidal flat till the late 1990s.

Shanghai’s Pudong and Puxi areas, though separated only by the Huangpu River, used to be dissimilar like chalk and cheese. Puxi was prosperous while Pudong was all villages and farmland before the 1990s. There was an old saying in Shanghai: It’s better to have a bed in Puxi than a house in Pudong.

In the past three decades, Pudong has developed into one of the country’s most prosperous areas. On November 12, a grand gathering was held in Shanghai to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the area’s development and opening up. At the gathering, President