Shanghai

: Alternate meanings: See Shanghai (disambiguation)

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Shanghai (; Shanghainese IPA: ), situated on the banks of the Yangtze River Delta, is China's largest city. The city's development in the past few decades has made it one of the most important economic, commercial, financial and communications centers of China.

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Shanghai is also home to the world's busiest port, followed by Singapore and Rotterdam.

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Administratively, Shanghai is one of four municipalities of the People's Republic of China, which have provincial-level status.

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The two characters in the name "Shanghai" literally mean "up/above" and "sea". The earliest occurrence of this name dates from the Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence and a town called "Shanghai" in the area. It is unclear how the name originated or how its meaning should be interpreted, though a literal reading suggests the sense "onto the sea".

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In Chinese, Shanghai's abbreviations are H? (滬 or 沪) and Shēn (申).

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The city has had various nicknames in English, including "Paris of the East", "Queen of the Orient" (or "Pearl of the Orient"), and even "The Whore of Asia" (a reference to corruption in the 1920s and 1930s, including vice, drugs and prostitution.)

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Shanghainese: Shanghainese (上海话; pinyin: Sh?nghǎihu?, lumanzi: Zanheireiwo, Shanghainese in IPA: ), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. Wu has 87 million speakers as of 1991, and is the second most spoken form of Chine...

IPA: REDIRECT International Phonetic Alphabet...

Yangtze River Delta: The Yangtze River Delta (Chinese 长江三角洲/長江三角洲 ch?ngjiāng sānjiǎozhōu) generally comprises the triangular-shaped territory of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province and northern Zhejiang province. The area lies at t...

Shanghai related Images and Photos (experimental)

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