The Oriental Pearl Tower stands at the tip of Lujiazui, on the Pudong bank of the Huangpu, looking straight across the river at the Bund. It was completed in 1994, before the surrounding financial district existed, and for a decade it was the tallest structure in China and the symbol of the city's return as a commercial power. It remains the most recognisable silhouette in Shanghai.
The design
The tower is built around three thick concrete legs that splay outwards from the base, carrying a central shaft. Eleven spheres of different sizes are threaded onto the structure, two of them large enough to hold public floors. The arrangement was intended to suggest pearls falling onto a jade plate, a reference to a line of classical Chinese poetry, and at night the spheres are lit in changing colours. The materials are deliberately modern - concrete, steel and glass - and the tower reads as a piece of engineering rather than a decorated building.
The viewing experience
The main observation level sits 263 metres up and gives a 360 degree view over the river, the Bund, the Lujiazui towers and, on a clear day, much of the city. Above it is a smaller space at 350 metres with a glass floor, which is the part most visitors remember: you step onto transparent panels and look straight down over the district. A revolving restaurant occupies one of the lower spheres, and a small museum at the base covers the tower's construction and the history of the district, along with a display of Shanghai's urban past.
How to make the most of it
Queues are the main obstacle. Tickets are sold by level, with the higher observation decks and the glass floor costing more, and the wait can run to an hour or more in the middle of the day and at weekends. Buy online in advance if you can, and go either when it opens in the morning or about an hour before sunset, which gives you daylight, the sunset itself and the lit-up city in one visit. Haze is common in summer, and views are clearest after rain or in autumn and winter.
Getting there
The tower is a five minute walk from Lujiazui station on Line 2 and a short walk from the Dongchang Road ferry landing. It sits between the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium and the Lujiazui ring of skyscrapers, so the three are easy to combine. Note that the nearby Shanghai Tower is substantially taller and has its own observation deck, and some visitors choose one or the other rather than both.
