Nanjing (179)

Nanjing, whose name means "southern capital," is a city in eastern China on the Yangtze River, in Jiangsu province, with a population exceeding eight million. Founded in the fifth century BCE, it served repeatedly as imperial capital, notably under the first emperors of the Ming dynasty from 1368 onward, before Emperor Yongle moved the capital to Beijing in 1421. The city preserves the oldest surviving city wall in the world, originally 35 kilometers long, as well as the tomb of Emperor Hongwu, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Nanjing also served as the capital of the Republic of China from 1912 to 1937, before suffering Japanese occupation and the 1937 massacre. 

Shanghai (7)

Shanghai, China's largest city, spans approximately 6,340 km² at the mouth of the Yangtze River, with a population exceeding 24 million within its urban core. A modest fishing town before its port was forcibly opened to foreign trade following the First Opium War in 1842, the city was transformed by the British, French and later international concessions into a cosmopolitan crossroads between East and West. The Bund, a famous waterfront lined with Western-style buildings, today faces the skyscrapers of the Pudong financial district, whose Shanghai Tower rises 632 meters. China's leading financial and port center since the 1990s, Shanghai embodies the country's rapid modernization.