SHANGHAI, CHINA: Jin Mao Tower

• Address:  Shiji Da Dao 2, Shanghai
• Location:  Pudong (3 blocks southeast of Oriental Pearl TV Tower)
• Phone:  021/5047-5101
• Price:  Admission ¥70 ($10/£5); ¥60 ($8.55/£4.30) seniors over 70
• Website:  www.jinmao88.com
• Transport:  underground rail: Luijazui
  

NEW YORK TIMES:

For a higher-than-a-bird’s-eye view, head to this Art Deco monolith, which on cloudy nights evokes Gotham City. The Grand Hyatt occupies floors 53 to 87, and the lobby offers jaw-dropping panoramas. From the 56th-floor Patio lounge, geared toward the cigar-and-cognac set, gaze up at the dizzying spiral of rooms. An evening trio plays jazz on classical Chinese instruments.

FROMMER’S:

Built in 1998 as a Sino-American joint venture, this 421m-high (1,381 ft.) second-tallest building in China (to its neighbor the Shanghai World Financial Center) is simply sublime. Blending traditional Chinese and modern Western tower designs, the building, which boasts 88 floors (8 being an auspicious Chinese number), consists of 13 distinct tapering segments, with high-tech steel bands binding the glass like an exoskeleton. Offices occupy the first 50 floors, the Grand Hyatt hotel the 51st to the 88th floors, while a public observation deck on the 88th floor ("The Skywalk") offers views to rival those of the nearby Oriental Pearl TV Tower (its admission charge is also lower). High-speed elevators (9m/30 ft. per sec.) whisk visitors from Level B1 to the top in less than 45 seconds. The view from there is almost too high, but exquisite on a clear day. You can also look down at the 152m-high (499-ft.-high) atrium of the Grand Hyatt. Enter the building through entrance 4.

FODOR’S:

Choose between the 1960s Jetsons kitsch of the Pearl Tower or the pagoda-inspired Jin Mao. If you head to the top of either of these two Pudong skyscrapers you'll be in for a bird's-eye view of the city and its surroundings. Try to count the cranes working incessantly on restructuring the city's skyline. Cloud Nine is a bar at the top of the Grand Hyatt in the Jin Mao, so you can sip a cocktail while looking out at the zillions of twinkling lights.

LONELY PLANET:

In a city of dubious contemporary architecture, the colossal Jinmao Tower stands out for its winning design, loosely inspired by a traditional Chinese subject, the pagoda. If you want to see Shanghai in a splendid nutshell, travel in the elevators (moving at 9.1m/second) to the 88th-floor observation deck, accessed from the separate podium building to the side of the main tower. Time your visit at dusk for both day and night views.

It's essentially an office block (owned by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation) with the high-altitude Grand Hyatt renting space from the 53rd to 87th floors.

While you're there you might as well shoot off a postcard from what is officially the world's highest post office. Alternatively, sample the same view through the carbonated fizz of a gin and tonic at Cloud 9 - the world's highest bar at the time of writing - on the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt and photograph the hotel's astonishing barrel-vaulted atrium, one of the world's tallest.

A visitor has her picture taken near a window on the 88th floor observation deck of the Jin Mao Tower.  Qilai Shen for The New York Times