The Oriental Pearl Tower is one of those structures that exists simultaneously as architecture and as mythology. Rising 468 metres above the Pudong waterfront, its twin pink-tinted spheres stacked along a central column became the defining image of Shanghai's explosive 1990s reinvention — a city announcing itself to the world in neon and steel. Completed in 1994, it was the tallest structure in China at the time and remains one of Asia's most recognisable skylines, even now that the neighbouring Shanghai Tower and World Financial Center have long since overtaken it in height. Standing beneath it and looking up, you feel the full audacity of what China was attempting in that decade.
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