Traffic is a huge problem associated with the large population - recent statistics has Shanghai over 14 million people within the official city limits making it the highest (known) populated city. The three most populous cities in the USA- New York City at just over 8 million, the city of Los Angeles at 3.9 million and Chicago's population around 2.8 million - are equivalent to the population of Shanghai. 
The Government has systmatically removed large historical sections of the city and replaced them with large commercial and residential buildings with unique architecture and attention to detail. Truthfully, we did not have a lot of time to explore the city and supposedly there are a number of interesting areas and gardens within the city and a beautiful countryside beyond the urban area. The bulk of the time was spent at the conference in an area called Pudong. Both Angela and I agree that we learned a lot from the presenters and our peers during the sessions. However, it definitely is a challenge when the teacher becomes the student as our attention span waned near the end of each 90 minute session and towards the end of the day.
The conference ended on the Sunday and our flight wasn't scheduled to leave for Singapore until Monday afternoon. So we took the opportunity to do some shopping and seeing as 80% of all goods are produced in China (a bit of an exaggeration) we were told the prices are very reasonable and you can bargain for even better prices. We were there with two other colleagues and between the 4 of us we brought back to Singapore 5 sets of Calloway golf clubs complete with bag, umbrella and travel bag. A single set cost $230 SGD - about $170 Cdn. The clubs look and feel pretty close to the real thing as I compared them to a local shop.
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