The newly revitalised Fairmont Peace Hotel Shanghai will offer approximately 269 deluxe guestrooms and suites with a selection of eight restaurants and lounges. Included among these is the much-loved Jazz Bar, a Shanghai institution since the 1930s. In addition, a lobby lounge on the ground floor, a mezzanine-level sushi, wine and cigar bar as well as a heritage Chinese restaurant on the 8th floor and the Peace Grill Restaurants on the 9th floor will offer a new level of elegance and comfort befitting of today’s discerning travellers. The 9th floor will also host the famed Peace Hall, where the property’s iconic sprung-wooden dance floor still evokes memories of old Shanghai cabarets and gala parties.

Responsible for the entire renovation of the property formerly referred to as the ‘Premier Hotel of the Far East’ is the internationally acclaimed design firm, Hirsch Bedner Associates. Now in the final design stages, the Fairmont Peace Hotel is being brought back to life and transformed into an ultra-luxurious global icon for the 21st century.

A low-rise extension has been added to the rear of the hotel, housing guestrooms as well as a sky-lit swimming pool and spa. The famous ‘Nine Nations Suites’ will remain a feature of the new hotel; four of these (Indian, English, Chinese and American) will be preserved from the old Peace Hotel, while the French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and German suites will be redesigned in keeping with their original concepts. A presidential suite will occupy the 10th floor penthouse where the hotel’s flamboyant creator and former owner, Victor Sassoon, once lived.

In addition to the renovation of many elements of the building, which remain true to its historical integrity, the hotel will ensure a timeless reinterpretation of its glamorous 1920s and 1930s heyday, enabling it to sit alongside Fairmont’s impressive list of heritage hotels worldwide which include The Savoy, London and The Plaza, New York.

Please visit www.fairmont.com for further updates on the restoration.

Notes for editors:
A leader in the global hospitality industry, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts is an extraordinary collection of luxury hotels, which includes iconic landmarks like Fairmont Le Ch?teau Frontenac in Québec City, Fairmont The Norfolk, Nairobi and London’s The Savoy, reopening in 2010. Fairmont hotels are one-of-a-kind properties where sophisticated travellers can discover culturally rich experiences that are authentic to the destination. Situated in some of the most exclusive and pristine areas in the world, Fairmont is committed to responsible tourism and is an industry leader in sustainable hotel management with its award-winning Green Partnership programme.  Fairmont’s portfolio includes 56 distinctive hotels, with plans to develop over 25 new properties in the coming years in destinations as diverse as Shanghai, Morocco and Anguilla.

Fairmont is owned by Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, a leading global hotel company with 91 hotels worldwide under the Raffles, Fairmont and Swiss?tel brands. The company also owns Fairmont and Raffles branded Residences, Estates and luxury private residence club properties.

For more information or reservations, please call 0845 071 0153 or visit www.fairmont.com. Images for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts are available on www.leonardo.com/fairmont. User name: Fairmont – password: media.

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is located in Pudong Park in Lujiazui, Shanghai. The tower, surrounded by the Yangpu Bridge in the northeast and the Nanpu Bridge in the southwest, creates a picture of ‘twin dragons playing with pearls’. The entire scene is a photographic jewel that excites the imagination and attracts thousands of visitors year-round.

This 468 meters high (1,536 feet) tower is the world’s third tallest TV and radio tower surpassed in height only by towers in Toronto, Canada and Moscow, Russia. However, even more alluring than its height is the tower’s unique architectural design that makes the Oriental Pearl TV Tower one of the most attractive places anywhere.

The base of the tower is supported by three seven-meter wide slanting stanchions. Surrounding the eleven steel spheres that are ’strung’ vertically through the center of the tower are three nine-meter wide columns. There are three large spheres including the top sphere, known as the space module. Then there are five smaller spheres and three decorative spheres on the tower base. The entire structure rests on rich green grassland and gives the appearance of pearls shining on a jade plate.

Visitors travel up and down the tower in double-decker elevators that can hold up to fifty people at the rate of seven meters per second. The elevator attendants recite an introduction to the TV Tower in English and Chinese during the rapid 1/4-mile ascent. Once you reach your destination, you will be amazed at the variety of activities available as the various spheres and columns actually house places of interest, commerce, and recreation.

The inner tower is a recreational palace, while the Shanghai Municipal History Museum is located in the tower’s pedestal. The large lower sphere has a futuristic space city and a fabulous sightseeing hall. From here, on a clear day a visitor can see all the way to the Yangtze River. The base of the tower is home to a science fantasy city. The five smaller spheres are a hotel that contains twenty-five elegant rooms and lounges. The pearl at the very top of the tower contains shops, restaurants, (including a rotating restaurant) and a sightseeing floor. The view of Shanghai from this height fills you with wonder at the beauty that surrounds you. When viewed from the Bund at night, the tower’s three-dimensional lighting makes it a delight of brilliant color.

It is amazing that this ultra-modern tower combines ancient concepts such as the spherical pearls, with 21st Century technology, commerce, recreation, educational and conference facilities. All of this and it really is a TV and radio tower that services the Shanghai area with more than nine television channels and upwards of ten FM radio channels. Truly, ‘oriental pearl’ is the most suitable name for this tower.

Behind Shanghai’s skyscrapers, Art Deco edifices, and colonial bungalows lies a maze of lanes lined with teahouses, ancient markets, and sidewalk stalls—a parallel world that reveals an untold history. Recent transplant Emily Prager steps out her back door and into a hidden city few outsiders ever find

I had lived in Shanghai for about two months when I learned that behind every building which fronts the street is a second and far more enticing world: a labyrinth of winding lanes and alleyways that contains all kinds of eclectic little businesses and historic houses. It is an intimate Shanghai, and one that I got to know mostly by setting out and searching on foot.

I had moved here from Manhattan with my twelve-year-old daughter, Lulu, and had rented a lane house in the former French Concession. For the first few weeks, all of our movements were concentrated on the front of the house. Then one day, I unlocked the back door and stepped outside.

Here was a narrow sunlit passage with two-story, gray-brick lane houses like mine on both sides. It was lunchtime, and the weather-beaten wooden doors and rusty casement windows were flung open wide, and inside, people were bending over sizzling woks on hot plates in tiny hallway kitchens. Brown sparrows swooped and chirped and alighted on bamboo poles overhead, prancing on the laundry hanging there. Some women were laughing and chatting with one another as they scrubbed greens at an outdoor sink, and others squatted over pink and red tin basins of water, peeling root vegetables. Farmers, their faces dark brown from countryside sun, hawked cherries with a songlike cry, the fruit piled in woven baskets hung on shoulder poles across the back of their bent necks.

I walked slowly down this lane, turned the corner, and found that the lane wound on, connecting to an even narrower alley which led to two other lanes that twisted and turned around a natural garden of fruit trees and rose bushes and eventually snaked out onto Xinle Road, the street parallel to mine.

I stared up at the old Art Deco apartment buildings which line that road, and I thought that they were almost like storefronts on a movie set. Behind them, thousands of people lived unseen. Further, there were secret ways to move around the city incognito. I determined in that moment to perform a Cheever-esque act. I would try to cross the entire French Concession by secret lanes without ever using a main street or avenue.

Two distinct worlds have existed in Shanghai since the end of the First Opium War in 1842. After the British attacked the Tao-Kuang emperor and took the city, they demanded that Shanghai become an open trading port and that Britain be granted city land for an exclusive settlement run entirely under British law. Not long after, the French and the Americans each claimed the same thing, and lands along the Huangpu River were designated the International Settlement and the French Concession, behind which lay the all-Chinese city proper.

In time, the foreign settlements expanded and eventually encroached on the Chinese city, shoving it back behind the new, elaborate colonial buildings (which we now identify as the Bund), forcing it to squeeze itself into a warren of alleyways and lanes. So was born a Westernized, urban Shanghai, peopled for the most part by foreigners, rich Chinese and their retainers, and the desperately poor. That modern, bustling Shanghai of the 1920s and ’30s flourished until the Japanese invaded in 1939.

The Langton House Hotel is the perfect location for your wedding reception with full five course menus, champagne reception, live music, beautiful garden and ballroom settings and lively entertainment. In our Garden Patio/Conservatory, Canap?s & Live Music, also Champagne Reception for Bridal Party.

Phone: +353 56 7765133

Address: 67 John Street, Kilkenny, Ireland

Site: http://www.langtons.ie

Name:Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower (Dongfang Mingzhu Ta)
City:Shanghai
Address:1 Century Boulevard, Pudong District