The World: Shanghai: Town of Merchants

THE half-caste child of East and West, Shanghai was built mainly by 19th century European merchants. It has become—in perhaps too many ways—China's New York. It is the nation's largest city (10 million people) and the busiest port in the Communist world, with China's most extensive industry and, consequently, its thickest smog. It also has one of China's largest slums. The hunger and diseases that used to snuff out the lives of thousands of infants annually during the 1930s have gone. But so have the sin and the aura of intrigue and the giddy opulence....