Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Along the streets at Yuyuan, Shanghai.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2011

Waking up in China’s largest city that is Shanghai, amongst its more than 24 million inhabitants certainly puts a perspective on how much of an impact you might make during a single day in your life when you finally step out the door and make your way around with your errands.

In just about twenty to thirty years, Shanghai as a city has grown at an amazing speed. The skyscrapers seen today along the Huangpu River, The Bund and Lujiazui were non-existent just a stone’s throw back in time, where it would’ve been difficult for most anyone to recognize the landscape and skyline of the central finance district between these decades if you were not at first shown pictures of the landscape from then till now.

The past decade alone has seen a paradigm shift in Shanghai from a city with Communist ideals to one that is cosmopolitan with a global outlook. Much of this is the fruitful result of the Chinese government’s efforts at economic reforms in China beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

If any organization could trace and reflect an aspect of Shanghai’s modern history in global trade and the resulting impact of the Chinese government’s efforts at bringing China and its state-owned enterprises to the global scene, then Baosteel Group Corporation, the second largest steel producer in the world with approximate annual revenues of around USD $21.5 billion would be a good case study to examine. With 45 wholly owned subsidiaries in markets across the world, in countries with as diverse cultures such as Brazil, France, Germany, Russia and in Asian and Southeast Asian countries such as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore , Baosteel reflects the speed and tenacity at which Chinese organizations are able to make themselves visibly global whilst simultaneously catering to their very demanding and highly competitive domestic market.

Still, amongst the city’s global ambitions supported and run by its busy inhabitants who seem to maneuver through the city via just as many noisy and exuberant vehicles that never cease their honking, you’ll find in Shanghai that some waking hours beckon a certain lull to the senses, and are in effect… quieter than others. And it is in these hours that you can sit, think and breathe the calmer soul of the city as a mist that invites you to contemplate its living as an artfully drawn landscape, one perhaps seen in Chinese watercolour on silk or paper. It is these brief lulling hours of Shanghai, at dawn or just after dusk, that paints a picture of the place both past and present, juxtaposed in front of your very eyes in material form.
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