Pudong sets the pace for high-tech growth

The saying goes among retirees in the Caoyang neighborhood of Shanghai's Putuo district that the highest yield per unit of land in Pudong is always the next plot of wasteland to be constructed, because you would never know the limit of human wisdom.

Caoyang, constructed in 1951, was China's first "new village for workers" - a residential community of matchbox apartment buildings designed by architects from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Only those awarded honorary titles, such as "model laborer" and "advanced worker", were allowed to live in the apartments, in which two homes shared one toilet while most locals used closestools.

Pudong, or east of the Huangpu River, had been a synonym of countryside for these senior locals since Puxi, or west of the river - which divided Shanghai into two parts - was occupied by Western colonialists in the mid-19th century, becoming a forest of foreign settlements.