Completion of the Oriental Pearl Tower

The Oriental Pearl Tower is a television tower in the Pudong district of Shanghai, on the bank of the Huangpu River opposite the historic Bund. Its unusual design consists of three slim supports holding up spheres of different sizes, which are meant to resemble pearls falling onto a jade plate, as in a Chinese poem. The tower contains observation decks, a revolving restaurant and a museum of the history of Shanghai. At the time of completion it was the tallest structure in China and it quickly became an emblem of the city's modernization and of the development of Pudong into a financial district. It is now surrounded by much taller skyscrapers.

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