Quotessence
Home / Topics / Shanghai Quotes

Shanghai Quotes

Browse 68 quotes about Shanghai.

Related topics

CitiesIfs

Shanghai Quotes

“The streets of downtown Shanghai likewise seemed a continuous freak circus at first, unbelievably alive with all manner of people performing almost every physical and social function in public: yelling, gesturing, always acting, crushing throngs spilling through every kind of traffic, precariously amidst old cars and new ones and between coolies racing wildly to compete for ricksha fares, gingerly past "honey-carts" filled with excrement dragged down Bubbling Well Road, sardonically past perfumed, exquisitely gowned, mid-thigh-exposed Chinese ladies, jestingly past the Herculean bare-backed coolie trundling his taxi-wheelbarrow load of six giggling servant girls en route to home or work, carefully before singing peddlers bearing portable kitchens ready with delicious noodles on the spot, lovingly under gold-lettered shops overflowing with fine silks and brocades, dead-panning past village women staring wide-eyed at frightening Indian policemen, gravely past gambling mah-jongg ivories clicking and jai alai and parimutuel betting, slyly through streets hung with the heavy-sweet acrid smell of opium, sniffingly past southern restaurants and bright-lighted sing-song houses, indifferently past scrubbed, aloof young Englishmen in their Austins popping off to cricket on the Race Course, snickeringly round elderly white gentlemen in carriages with their wives or Russian mistresses out for the cool air along the Bund, and hastily past sailors looking for beer and women—from noisy dawn to plangent night the endless hawking and spitting, the baby's urine stream on the curb, the amah's scolding, the high falsetto of opera at Wing On Gardens where a dozen plays went on at once and hotel rooms next door filled up with plump virgins procured for wealthy merchants in from the provinces for business and debauch, the wail of dance bands moaning for slender bejeweled Chinese taxi dancers, the whiteness of innumerable beggars and their naked unwashed infants, the glamour of the Whangpoo with its white fleets of foreign warships, its shaggy freighters, its fan-sailed junks, its thousand lantern-lit sampans darting fire-flies on the moon-silvered water filled with deadly pollution. Shanghai!”

ChinaCommunismDebaucheryShanghai20th Century Shanghai
Book:Journey to the Beginning
Create image

“This is Unique !! Shopping malls working with one side of our needs, material satisfaction but here @ K11 there is a huge effort and initiative to bring emotional needs of human, our spiritual satisfaction. K11 doing this with bringing Art and Nature in to the material shopping experience. It is not only satisfying physical needs and material but also our soul. Art itself is biggest teacher and Nature is biggest artist.”

NeedsShoppingHong KongShanghaiMallK11
Author:Baris Gencel
Create image

“What moves you about the longtang of Shanghai stems from the most mundane scenes: not the surging rush of clouds and rain, but something steadily accumulated over time. It is the excitement of cooking smoke and human vitality. Something is flowing through the longtang that is unpredictable yet entirely rational, small, not large, and trivial—but then even a castle can be made out of sand. It has nothing to do with things like “history,” not even “unofficial history”: we can only call it gossip.”

HistoryGossipShanghaiTwentieth Century ShanghaiLongtang
Book:The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai
Create image

“Today, any action anywhere on earth has an immediate repercussion on all five continents. News of a victory of the Eastern armies in Morocco or Shanghai travels instantly, thanks to modern means of communication, to all Eastern peoples and fills them with enthusiasm and faith. This phenomenon is, of course, unprecedented in the history of man.”

MenMeanTodayActionEarthCoursesFiveModernCommunicationInternetVictoryNewsArmyEnthusiasmThanksPhenomenonContinentsFree SpeechEasternUnprecedentedRepercussionsMoroccoShanghaiMeans Of Communication
Author:Nikos Kazantzakis
Create image

“Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.”

ChildrenTwoSufferingCitiesAirWorstEnvironmentalVulnerableDevelopingBreathingSmokingMexicoPollutionCigarettePacksLungsCalcuttaBeijingTehranMexico CityShanghaiAir Pollution
Author:Lester R. Brown
Create image

“I really, really love China. To be honest, the food is so amazing! When I first went to Beijing and Shanghai, I actually became obsessed with soup dumplings, and would stand in lines and get them on the street. It was something that I became obsessed with and when I came back to the States, I did all this research for the best soup dumplings in the Los Angeles area and in the New York area and it was amazing to find those Asian dishes that were authentic and I can enjoy them at home.”

FirstsI CanStatesHomeEnjoyLinesStreetsHonestNew YorkResearchAreasChinaBeing HonestObsessedLos AngelesDishesSoupAsianBeijingShanghaiDumplings
Author:Tyra Banks
Create image

“Miles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.”

WorldFirstsLooksArtTwoShowsTelevisionDegreesWeaponsMilesMartial ArtsSuperheroNoonJackieShanghaiLethal Weapon
Author:Alfred Gough
Create image

“When we started out, we were among the first. Beijing had no and Shanghai had very few large buildings. At that time, it was all about building, building, building - and then selling, selling, selling. We were working like a manufacturer. Soon, however, we realized that land was running out in Beijing and Shanghai. So we started keeping our buildings, and managing and renting them out. We became landowners. That was the second act.”

FirstsRunningLandBuildingSellingBeijingShanghai
Author:Zhang Xin
Create image

“When we started out, we didn't really think that the era of great opportunity would end one day. We were much too busy developing our companies. But in today's China you can build a city, even a mega-city like Beijing or Shanghai, within 10 or 15 years. And then you are done. So in real estate development, the Gründerzeit is over. But that is not the case in other sectors.”

ThinkingYearsRealEndsDoneTodayOpportunityCitiesCompanyCasesDevelopmentOne DayBusyChinaDevelopingErasEstatesToo BusyGreat OpportunityBeijingMegaShanghai
Author:Zhang Xin
Create image

“Our company has only been active in Beijing and Shanghai, two very market-dominated cities. This was an advantage. Land is purchased here in public auctions, in a transparent way. When you do real estate development outside Beijing and Shanghai it is good to have "guanxi" - good relations within the local government.”

WayTwoRealGovernmentCitiesCompanyLandDevelopmentAdvantageRelationActiveLocalsEstatesTransparentBeijingAuctionsLocal GovernmentShanghai
Author:Zhang Xin
Create image

“I remember working with Jackie Chan on Shanghai Noon [2000], and when we were working on the script, I thought that my character thought about being an outlaw the way a kid today would think about being a rock star, as a way to impress girls. So it was just kind of a funny idea, but once we had that idea, it changed the character and made it something that was funnier to me to play.”

ThinkingWayKindMadeIdeasPlayCharacterKidsTodayRememberGirlStarsRocksChangedScriptsMade ItImpressRock StarNoonOutlawJackieShanghaiImpress A Girl
Author:Owen Wilson
Create image

“The United States is pushing as policy division of the world into rival currency camps - the dollar area on the one hand, and the Russia-Chinese-Shanghai Cooperation Organization group on the other, especially now that the IMF has changed its rules. People think that if there are rival currency groupings and national currencies are going bust, we might as well use gold as a safe haven.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldWellsStatesUseHandsMightUnitedUnited StatesGroupsHavensPolicyChangedSafeAreasGoldOrganizationDollarsRussiaChinesePushingDivisionCampsCooperationCurrencyRivalsSafe HavenShanghaiImf
Author:Michael Hudson
Create image

“I think that the exchange is very important. Before I did the exhibition in Shanghai, I was a judge for the John Moores Painting Prize and that was very interesting for me, because some of the judges are Chinese and some are British, and we look at the work together. It was fascinating that most of the time we were in complete agreement, but some of the time we were not. People send their works from all over China. For a foreigner, this gave me a very good picture about what is happening in China and its art today.”

PeopleThinkingLooksArtImportantTodayTogetherInterestingPaintingJudgingHappeningsVery GoodChinaBritishChineseFascinatingAgreementWorking TogetherPrizeVery InterestingForeignersExhibitionsShanghai
Author:Michael Craig-Martin
Create image

“Now we characterise Russian-Chinese relations as a strategic partnership, even a special strategic partnership. We have never had such a level of trust with China before. China is our major trade and economic partner among foreign states. We implement joint multi-billion projects. We cooperate not only within the UN Security Council, which is logical, as both China and Russia are permanent members of the UN Security Council, but also within such regional organisations as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS, etc.”

StatesLevelsEconomicSpecialSecurityMembersProjectsMajorsRelationTradeChinaPartnersBillionsRussiaChinesePermanentEtcLogicalCooperationPartnershipCouncilJointsStrategicOrganisationSecurity CouncilShanghaiBrics
Author:Vladimir Putin
Create image

“While certain coastal cities have become very prosperous, the rest of China has a per capita income of $200 a year. The coast wants to have nothing to do with the interior; it wants to work with Tokyo and New York. This is an old story in China. It is why Mao succeeded in 1927. He wanted [coastal] Shanghai to throw the foreigners out, but Shanghai was doing too well financially [to expel foreigners]. So Mao went to the interior and raised a peasant army. He came back to Shanghai and sealed off the country.”

WantYearsWellsCountryStoriesWantedCertainCitiesNew YorkArmyRaisedChinaIncomeCoastInteriorsProsperousPeasantsForeignersTokyoMaoCoastalShanghai
Author:George Friedman
Create image

“The Chinese central government will slowly and steadily lose authority while regional armies [gain power]. The Western powers are going to take sides to protect their investments - they have put billions of dollars into Shanghai. Their fear is that [these investments] are going to be expropriated by a warlord from the interior who will sweep down on Shanghai. They will try to form alliances with warlords to protect their concessions, and there will be a huge flow of weapons into China.”

TryingGovernmentFormSidesLosesHugeProtectAuthorityWeaponsGainsFlowArmyDollarsInvestmentWesternChinaBillionsChineseInteriorsAlliancesConcessionsShanghaiCentral GovernmentWarlords
Author:George Friedman
Create image