Shanghai

Shanghai is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China and the most populous city proper in the world with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. It is a global financial centre and transport hub, with the world's busiest container port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta, it sits on the south edge of the estuary of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the East China coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea.

Geography
Shanghai lies on China's east coast roughly equidistant from Beijing and Guangzhou. The Old City and modern downtown Shanghai are now located in the center of an expanding peninsula between the Yangtze River Delta to the north and Hangzhou Bay to the south, formed by the Yangtze's natural deposition and by modern land reclamation projects. The provincial-level Municipality of Shanghai administers both the eastern area of this peninsula and many of its surrounding islands. It is bordered on the north and west by Jiangsu, on the south by Zhejiang, and on the east by the East China Sea. Its northernmost point is on Chongming Island, now the second-largest island in mainland China after its expansion during the 20th century.

Climate
Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate and experiences four distinct seasons. Winters are chilly and damp, with northwesterly winds from Siberia can cause nighttime temperatures to drop below freezing, although most years there are only one or two days of snowfall. Summers are hot and humid, with an average of 8.7 days exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) annually; occasional downpours or freak thunderstorms can be expected. The city is also susceptible to typhoons in summer and the beginning of autumn, none of which in recent years has caused considerable damage. The most pleasant seasons are spring, although changeable and often rainy, and autumn, which is generally sunny and dry. The city averages 4.2 °C (39.6 °F) in January and 27.9 °C (82.2 °F) in July, for an annual mean of 16.1 °C (61.0 °F). With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 34% in March to 54% in August, the city receives 1,895 hours of bright sunshine annually. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −10.1 °C (14 °F) on 31 January 1977 (unofficial record of −12.1 °C (10 °F) was set on 19 January 1893) to 39.9 °C (104 °F) on 6 and 8 August 2013. A highest record of 40.9 °C (106 °F) was registered in Xujiahui, a downtown station on 21 July 2017.

Economy
Shanghai is the commercial and financial center of China, and ranks 13th in the 2017 edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (and fourth most competitive in Asia after Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo) published by the Z/Yen Group and Qatar Financial Centre Authority. It also ranks the most expensive city to live in Mainland China, according to the study of Economist Intelligence Unit in 2017. It was the largest and most prosperous city in East Asia during the 1930s, and rapid re-development began in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the Pudong District, a former swampland reclaimed to serve as a pilot area for integrated economic reforms. By the end of 2009, there were 787 financial institutions, of which 170 were foreign-invested. In 2009, the Shanghai Stock Exchange ranked third among worldwide stock exchanges in terms of trading volume and sixth in terms of the total capitalization of listed companies, and the trading volume of six key commodities including rubber, copper and zinc on the Shanghai Futures Exchange all ranked first in the world.

In the last two decades Shanghai has been one of the fastest developing cities in the world. Since 1992 Shanghai has recorded double-digit growth almost every year except during the global recession of 2008 and 2009. In 2011, Shanghai's total GDP grew to 1.92 trillion yuan (US$297 billion) with GDP per capita of 82,560 yuan (US $12,784). The three largest service industries are financial services, retail, and real estate. The manufacturing and agricultural sectors accounted for 39.9 percent and 0.7 percent of the total output respectively. Average annual disposable income of Shanghai residents, based on the first three quarters of 2009, was 21,871 RMB.

Demographics
The 2010 census put Shanghai's total population at 23,019,148, a growth of 37.53% from 16,737,734 in 2000. 20.6 million of the total population, or 89.3%, are urban, and 2.5 million (10.7％) are rural. Based on the population of its total administrative area, Shanghai is the second largest of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, behind Chongqing, but is generally considered the largest Chinese city because Chongqing's urban population is much smaller.

Shanghai also has 150,000 officially registered foreigners, including 31,500 Japanese, 21,000 Americans and 20,700 Koreans, but the real number of foreign citizens in the city is probably much higher. Shanghai is also a domestic immigration city, which means a huge population of citizens come from other cities in China.

Religion
Due to its cosmopolitan history, Shanghai has a blend of religious heritage as shown by the religious buildings and institutions still scattered around the city. According to a 2012 survey only around 13% of the population of Shanghai belongs to organised religions, the largest groups being Buddhists with 10.4%, followed by Protestants with 1.9%, Catholics with 0.7% and other faiths with 0.1%. Around 87% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in worship of nature deities and ancestors, Confucian churches, Taoism and folk religious sects.

Education
Shanghai ranked first in the 2009 and 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a worldwide study of academic performance of 15-year-old students conducted by the OECD. Shanghai students, including migrant children, scored highest in every aspect (math, reading and science) in the world. The study concludes that public-funded schools in Shanghai have the highest educational quality in the world. Critics of PISA results counter that, in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, most children of migrant workers can only attend city schools up to the ninth grade, and must return to their parents' hometowns for high school due to hukou restrictions, thus skewing the composition of the city's high school students in favor of wealthier local families.

Shanghai is the first city in the country to implement 9-year mandatory education. The 2010 census shows that out of Shanghai's total population, 22.0% had a college education, double the level from 2000, while 21.0% had high school, 36.5% middle school, and 1.35% primary school education. 2.74% of residents age 15 and older were illiterate.

Shanghai has more than 930 kindergartens, 1,200 primary and 850 middle schools. Over 760,000 middle schools students and 871,000 primary school students are taught by 76,000 and 64,000 teaching staff respectively. Shanghai is a major center of higher education in China with over 30 universities and colleges.

Children with foreign passports are permitted to attend any public school in Shanghai. Prior to 2007 they were permitted to attend 150 select public schools. Shanghai has the largest number of international schools of any city in China. 

Transport
Shanghai has an extensive public transport system, largely based on metros, buses and taxis. Payment of all these public transportation tools can be made by using the Shanghai Public Transportation Card.

Shanghai's rapid transit system, the Shanghai Metro, incorporates both subway and light metro lines and extends to every core urban district as well as neighboring suburban districts. As of 2016, there are 14 metro lines (excluding the Shanghai Maglev Train and Jinshan Railway), 364 stations and 588 km (365 mi) of lines in operation, making it the longest network in the world.

In 2010, Shanghai reintroduced trams, this time as a modern rubber tyred Translohr system, in Zhangjiang area of East Shanghai as Zhangjiang Tram. A separate conventional tram system being constructed in Songjiang District. Additional tram lines are under study in Hongqiao Subdistrict and Jiading District.

Shanghai also has the world's most extensive network of urban bus routes, with nearly one thousand bus lines, operated by numerous transportation companies.

Environment
The extensive public park system in Shanghai offers the citizens some reprieve from the urban jungle. By the year 2012, the city had 157 parks, with 138 of them free of charge. Some of the parks, aside from offering a green public space to locals, became popular tourist attractions due to their unique location, history or architecture.

Culture
Shanghai is sometimes considered a center of innovation and progress in China. It was in Shanghai, for example, that the first motor car was driven and (technically) the first train tracks and modern sewers were laid. It was also the intellectual battleground between socialist writers who concentrated on critical realism, which was pioneered by Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Nien Cheng and the famous French novel by André Malraux, Man's Fate, and the more "bourgeois", more romantic and aesthetically inclined writers, such as Shi Zhecun, Shao Xunmei, Ye Lingfeng, and Eileen Chang.

In the past years Shanghai has been widely recognized as a new influence and inspiration for cyberpunk culture. Futuristic buildings such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and the neon-illuminated Yan'an Elevated Road are a few examples that have helped to boost Shanghai's cyberpunk image.

Language
The vernacular language spoken in the city is Shanghainese, a dialect of the Taihu Wu subgroup of the Wu Chinese family. This makes it a different language from the official language nationwide, which is Mandarin, itself completely mutually unintelligible with Wu Chinese. Most Shanghai residents are the descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The population of those regions speak different dialects of Wu Chinese. From the 1990s, many migrants outside of Wu-speaking area have come to Shanghai for work. They often cannot speak the local language and therefore use Mandarin as a lingua franca.

Sport
Shanghai is home to several football teams, including two in the Chinese Super League – Shanghai Greenland Shenhua and Shanghai SIPG. Another professional team, Shanghai Shenxin, is currently in China League One. China's top tier basketball team, the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, developed Yao Ming before he entered the NBA. Shanghai also has an ice hockey team, China Dragon, and a baseball team, the Shanghai Golden Eagles, which plays in the China Baseball League.

Beginning in 2004, Shanghai started hosting the Chinese Grand Prix, one round of the Formula One World Championship. The race was staged at the Shanghai International Circuit. In 2010, Shanghai also became the host city of German Touring Car Masters (DTM), which raced in a street circuit in Pudong.

Shanghai also holds the Shanghai Masters tennis tournament which is part of ATP World Tour Masters 1000, and the BMW Masters and WGC-HSBC Champions golf tournaments.

The Shanghai Cricket Club is a cricket club based in Shanghai. The club dates back to 1858 when the first recorded cricket match was played between a team of British Naval officers and a Shanghai 11. Following a 45-year dormancy after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the club was re-established in 1994 by expatriates living in the city and has since grown to over 300 members.

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