Hotel Park Hotel Shanghai

Hotel Park Hotel Shanghai has a brass marker set into its lobby floor claiming this exact spot as the geographic center of Shanghai. The guide traces how a 1934 Art Deco tower by the architect Laszlo Hudec, built to outshine the Cathay Hotel on the Bund, became the tallest building in Asia for nearly three decades, and why city surveyors climbed up here in November 1950 while rebuilding Shanghai's map after years of war. Listen for what they chose on the roof to measure the whole city against.