Oriental Pearl, Shanghai TV tower

Oriental Pearl Tower, Shanghai’s TV tower, is the world’s third highest TV tower and the highest in Asia. The entire tower is 468 meters high and consists of 11 different sized spheres.

There are three levels of the tower that visitors can reach. The lowest lookout is in the biggest sphere of the tower, at 90 meters up. The next level is in the middle-sized sphere, 263 meters above the ground level. The highest level you can reach as a visitor is the smallest ball at the top which is at an altitude of 350 meters. As a visitor, you cannot come up any further. Left is only the antenna that extends another 118 meters up in the air.

Hotel and Rotating Restaurant

In the second sphere, there is a restaurant that rotates around the tower’s center axis. You can sit, eat and have an overview of the city at the same time. Between the pillars of the two larger spheres, there is actually a hotel with 20 rooms.

Security check

Before you go into the tower you must go through a ridiculous security check. It looks like the same as at an airport, with X-ray machine, metal detector and security guards with harsh appearance.

The only rule, however, is to check if you have liquids with you. Water bottles are absolutely forbidden!

They did not look for anything else at all. I had my big camera around my neck, and wallet and keys in my pocket when I went through the metal detector. It was beeping like crazy but no one cared about checking me or anyone else who made the detector beep. Instead they screamed at my empty water bottle and wanted me to throw it before I could come in. Oh well.

I was there on a Sunday and it was a big crowd. It took about 20 minutes to get through the security check and then another 20 minutes in the long queue to the elevators.

Boring job

In each elevator there was a girl who spoke more like a robot. Her job was to press the right button and then tell us a little about the elevator while going up, including how fast the elevator was traveling up and at what altitude we were. She spoke both in Chinese and English. It seemed to be an incredibly boring job and it must be purely painful for her to stand there all day and read the same line all the time.

The eternal haze

In China’s large cities, it is usually always very foggy. There are few days that the sky is really blue and you can see far. The day when I was up in the tower, was foggy as usual and visibility was at most a few kilometers. If it is clear, one can definitely see really far from 350 meters up.

Expensive

It was expensive to go up to the top sphere, it cost 150 RMB per person, but I think that it would feel foolish to be at such a high building and not go up to the top. To go only to the first level is cheaper.