Welcome to the future -- welcome to Shanghai.

In Shanghai, a city (depending on who's counting) of 15 to 20 million souls, you can feel the electric crackle of progress as you make your way through the crowded sidewalks and the manic traffic. A palpable sense of excitement, ambition, and destiny fills the air. The Shanghai Maglev train hustles commuters from the Longyang Road Metro station to Pudong airport. The elevated track vaults over apartments, alleyways, and modern freeways. This sleek aerodynamic train completes the 30 kilometer trip in less than 8 minutes, reaching speeds of 430 km/hour - that's over 250 miles per hour - in near silence. Within a couple of years there will be another maglev link between Pudong and Hongqiao Airports, and by 2010 another high-speed link to Hangzhou, a scenic lakeside city some 350 km away from Shanghai - so happy weekenders will make the hundred mile trip in less than half an hour.

Witness the Oriental Pearl TV tower, an informal symbol for the city. It's more than twice as big as the Space Needle in Seattle and way more than twice as futuristic. At night, animated neon lights flicker across its immense tower - part of the jaw-dropping and futuristic Pudong skyline, best viewed from the opposite shore in the shadow of the beautifully preserved early 20th century neoclassical architecture of The Bund. A thousand other skyscrapers rise from Shanghai's always-crowded streets, many of them anonymous concrete monoliths, but others paying exuberant homage to a variety of inspirations. There's a tower topped with an enormous stylized lotus blossom, which is supposed to attract money to flow into the building. Another building is a modern interpretation of the Art Deco Chrysler building. Shanghai resembles nothing so much as a futuristic, through-the-looking-glass view of Manhattan or Tokyo, about 15 years from now. It seems that the future has arrived - in the architecture and design of this exciting Chinese metropolis. Starwood has eight hotels in Shanghai, including the St. Regis Shanghai in Pudong District.