In Shanghai, there is a widely circulated saying: if you go to the Oriental Pearl Tower, you will be expelled from Shanghai.
Although this is a joke, if a local tells a friend that he went to the Oriental Pearl On the weekend, he will most likely be ridiculed for several days. Just as Beijingers don't go to Nanluoguxiang, Chengdu people don't go to Kuanzhai Alley, and Wuhan people don't go to Hubu Alley, the rejection of local "modern landmarks" in big cities is the same everywhere.
In order to prove this long-standing urban legend, one weekend in February, we invited several Shanghai locals who had never climbed the Oriental Pearl Before, for a day trip to the tower.
"I'm looking for a Shanghainese."
Accompany you to the Oriental Pearl Tower, it is difficult"
If you search the Internet for "Shanghainese go to the Oriental Pearl", then you can probably learn two very authentic Shanghainese dialect vocabulary: Xiang WuNing (rural) and 戆笃 (fool).
In 2019, Shanghai blogger @G Sangdong pointed out this tacit fact in the video: we Shanghai natives never go to the Oriental Pearl Tower. After this vibrato was sent out, it quickly resonated with the majority of netizens, and the Oriental Pearl Company also took advantage of the situation to invite G Monk Dong to come to a day trip to the tower.
However, his final vlog title still retains the last stubbornness of the locals: I was boarded the Oriental Pearl, so I was expelled from shanghai.
To further verify this, I asked my Shanghai friend L, "Have you ever been to the Oriental Pearl?" ”
L's answer to me was: "There should be very few young people in Shanghai who have really not been to the Oriental Pearl Once, because when we were in elementary school, the Spring and Autumn Tour was organized." ”
Born in 1994, L went to elementary school around 2000, when the Oriental Pearl had just been built for 5 years, and it was still a proud pride in the hearts of Shanghainese, and it was expected that it would become a frequent place for primary school spring and autumn excursions. So I put the target age group I was looking for on the post-00s.
However, when I talked about this topic, my Shanghai friends around me vaguely revealed an attitude in their words: it is difficult to find a Shanghainese who is willing to visit the Oriental Pearl.
And this is indeed the truth, even if ticket reimbursement is provided, few Shanghainese are willing to "sacrifice" their precious weekend time to go to the Oriental Pearl Tower with me, overlooking Shanghai 360 degrees like foreigners. After a long day of inquiring, I finally found three Shanghainese who were willing to climb the tower with me: S, born in 2001, W, born in 2000, and his mother Aunt Xia.
For S and W, the Oriental Pearl Tower is more of a childhood memory, often appearing in the mouths of mom and dad. By the time they were in elementary school, the Oriental Pearl Tower had long been not the preferred destination for Shanghai primary and secondary schools to organize spring and autumn tours, and more schools would choose Chenshan Botanical Garden and Shanghai Ocean Aquarium: tickets were cheaper, and students could also be given scientific knowledge of animals and plants.
"If I usually go out with my friends, I will also go to Xintiandi, Jing'an Temple, and the younger and more fashionable business districts around Jufuchang. Even if you come to Pudong, you will go to The Grand Place for dinner, who will come to the Oriental Pearl. S said.
As someone who watched the Oriental Pearl Tower build little by little, Aunt Xia had always had the idea of visiting, but when she was young, she was busy with work and taking care of two children, and did not have much time for entertainment.
"For our generation, the most attractive place of the Oriental Pearl is its revolving restaurant, but the price per capita is too high, and it is impossible to choose a family meal here." I used to want to bring my mom and dad up to play, and both old people thought the tickets were too expensive. Aunt Xia's tone was tinged with regret.
Tourists queuing under the Oriental Pearl
The cost performance is another reason, the base fare of 199 yuan is not cheap, if you still want to eat a meal in the revolving restaurant, the per capita consumption is more than 350 yuan. Foreigners may need to spend this money to punch in the Oriental Pearl And prove that they have been to Shanghai, but for Shanghainese, this "unjust money" is really unnecessary.
"Rare rest time, why come to the Oriental Pearl and tourists to compete for places, with these two or three hundred pieces to eat a good meal in the city is obviously more worthwhile." W said.
"Ascend the Oriental Pearl Tower,
Fulfilled a wish I had when I was younger."
February 13 is a cloudy day, which is not good news for us who want to climb the Oriental Pearl.
Although it is a Sunday, there are not many tourists who come to visit the Oriental Pearl On that day, and you can take the elevator without queuing. A few minutes later, we came to the main sightseeing level of 263 meters.
A mist of water hung over the city, and under the tower was the gray Huangpu River, and if you did not use a telescope, you could not see the landscape too far. The 360-degree view of the sightseeing did not make S and W very excited, and W, who works in the K11 building, whispered: "This is not much different from the scenery that our company looks out." ”
After walking alone on the viewing floor for ten minutes, S didn't have much desire to express. Under my repeated questioning, he held out the following answer:
"When I was a child, I still thought that the Oriental Pearl Tower was very beautiful, but in recent years, the paint on its outside has faded, and it has become more and more ugly, which is not as beautiful as the small waist in Guangzhou and the 101 building in Taipei." Today I climbed the tower and looked at it, and the scenery was just like that, no surprises, just as boring as I imagined. ”
Guangzhou small brute waist
Disappointment accompanied the rest of the day, and when we took the outdoor sightseeing gallery 90m by elevator, entertainment such as souvenir shops and VR roller coasters became the focus compared to the scenery outside the tower. S was obviously a little impatient, "We came up to see the scenery, why make so many places to sell things, it's really not very advanced." ”
The only one who was a little excited was Aunt Xia, after going to the tower, she first circled around the viewing layer, and then scanned the code and used the telescope to overlook the location of her home and relatives. But after just a few tens of minutes, this little fun quickly disappeared, and Aunt Xia and W, who had reserved a revolving restaurant, sat outside the exhibition hall, waiting for the restaurant to start the evening business.
Aunt Xia told me that when she was young, she was very proud of the Oriental Pearl Tower, felt that it had extraordinary significance for Shanghai, and that visiting and eating at the Oriental Pearl Tower was once a modern symbol. But because the ticket price is too high, she has never really come, and this climb to the tower is a wish she had when she was young.
The two young people did not have such mixed feelings about the Oriental Pearl Tower. After S got off the tower, he said to me seriously: "Next time, even if someone reimburses me, I will not come back to the Oriental Pearl." W sent a circle of friends in the evening, "a day to expel Shanghai with my mother", with a photo of going to the Oriental Pearl on the same day.
A window that can take a picture of the Pearl of the Orient,
It has become the hottest exhibit of Pudong Art Museum
In 1994, when the Oriental Pearl Tower was just completed, Shanghainese attitude towards it was not as cold and disgusted as it is now.
Before the Oriental Pearl was built, many major cities across the country had already built towering TV towers. They all look the same: a minaret topped with a saucer-shaped tower. In terms of architectural style, it is indeed slightly unsightly.
Beijing TV Tower
At the beginning of the design, the Oriental Pearl Tower tried to make a breakthrough in modeling. The designers referred to the inspiration of the Abu Dhabi TV Tower and the Belgian Expo Atomium, and finally determined the scheme of "large beads and small pearls falling on the jade disk".
The first four designs
The construction process lasted more than three years, when Pudong was still desolate, and the Oriental Pearl Tower attracted the attention and attention of all of Shanghai from the beginning of its establishment.
On the day that the Oriental Pearl Tower installed the transmission antenna at the top of the tower, the TV station broadcast the whole live broadcast, and the people of Shanghai were ecstatic, which was a sign of ushering in a new era, and some media commented that it was "as meaningful as the Apollo moon landing".
In the decade that followed, the Oriental Pearl once became the pride of Shanghainese. Spring and autumn trips in primary and secondary schools, first dates with lovers, and must-see attractions for friends to come to Shanghai, many post-70s and post-80s have left unforgettable memories on the Oriental Pearl.
However, with the completion of the Jin Mao Tower, the World Financial Center, and the Shanghai Center, the Oriental Pearl is no longer thriving, and even under the background of the other three high-rise buildings, it looks a little shabby. As for the revolving restaurant that many Shanghainese people yearn for, there are more "alternatives".
W and Aunt Xia said after dinner at the revolving restaurant that although the scenery is not bad, the quality of the dishes can only be considered mediocre, "if it is very systematic, I will give it seven points."
(Image courtesy of W)
Many people may lament that the most glorious time of the Oriental Pearl was forever left in the 1990s. In a sense, this sentence has some truth, but this does not mean that the Oriental Pearl Tower has passed, it has already glowed with another vitality.
After the pudong art museum opened last year, the most popular thing is a window that can be photographed in the Oriental Pearl. This seemingly unremarkable window frames the Oriental Pearl just inside, and there is almost no need to work hard to shoot, and you can get a perfectly composed photo at hand.
Therefore, in the first few months of opening, whenever you visit the Pudong Art Museum, you can see several tourists in front of this window. If you want to photograph the window that "holds" the Oriental Pearl on a weekend, you may need to queue for more than half an hour.
From the Peninsula Hotel to the Samet Building, from the Zhapu Road Bridge to a window of the Pudong Art Museum, people are keen to chase the Oriental Pearl Tower from different angles, and "Fancy Photography of the Oriental Pearl Tower" has long become a new way for everyone to interpret this landmark. As long as you can shoot new angles that others have never filmed, then you have the right to speak on social platforms.
Whatever attitude Shanghainese have toward the Oriental Pearl Tower today, it cannot change the fact that it is one of the most successful urban landmarks in all of China.
And this landmark building, which once opened a new page for Shanghai's urban development, will still be revitalized in different forms in the future.
Edit: Echo
Some of the images were provided by the respondents
The rest of the sources are networked with Visual China