Shanghai Municipality Scenes

12. The Oriental Pearl Television Tower

The Oriental Pearl Television Tower stands 468 meters (1,535 feet) high. The observation deck atop the tower has become one of Shanghai's top tourist draws. Television has made great changes in China in the last 17 years. When we first went to China in 1984 TV was only on for a couple of hours in the evening and only boring government shows about how well the country was doing. Now they have much longer and finer shows as well as some of the soap opera trash we see in the United States. More and more foreign shows are available and news broadcasts in English are now shown. Much editing is still taking place however.