The Flair bar at the top of the Ritz Carlton Pudong is the highest open-air bar in Shanghai , you need to take two high speed lifts to get there. From here you can look down at all the other rooftop bars; little pools of coloured light flickering like iPad screens on the tops of every available building. Not since the heady 1930s when Shanghai was party central for the Jazz generation has the city been as fashionable. Only this time the locals also get to enjoy it.
One sure fire sign that Shanghai is style central are the number of new luxury hotels flowering in the Paris of the East. And the fact that the prestigious International Luxury Travel Mart Asia , run each May, has made Shanghai its spiritual home for the last two years - the movers and shakers of the luxury travel word won't travel just anywhere (ILTM Europe is in Cannes).
The elegant Langham Xintiandi made its debut in October 2010 and is still awaiting some finishing touches (an indoor pool & gym late July, a martini bar in October) but we won't hold that against it.
With Waterhouse on South Bund Singaporean design guru Loh Lik Peng has revamped a former army compound on the Huangpu River and created a 19-room guesthouse.
Between the two World Wars Shanghai shone: deliciously decadent, cultured, yet corrupt it was a place where the pursuit of pleasure was second only to the pursuit of wealth.
When it opened in October 2009 it heralded the return of parent company, The Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd, to the city of Shanghai, where it had owned and operated four of China's best hotels from the 1920s to the 1950s.
