With over 2,800 businesses heading to Shanghai to attend the China International Import Expo, CGTN's Ramah Nyang explored some of the sights and sounds of the host city.

In many ways, Shanghai has always been at the vanguard of significant changes in what is now the world's second-largest economy. The first experiments in opening up China's economy happened right here. If you're looking for one of the few commercially operating mag-lev trains in the world, you'll find it here as well. But that's not the only cutting-edge technology found in a city that barely 2 centuries ago, was little more than a fishing village.

RAMAH NYANG SHANGHAI "When the authorities over here talk about high-speed rail, this is what they're talking about. 500 to 1,000 people, depending on the configuration of the train, speeding along the countryside, at over 330 kilometers-an-hour. Remember, this is all electric so you could arguably say it is a lot more beneficial to the environment than flying."

The Fuxing trains run on a tight schedule, moving at least a thousand people with each trip from these two metropolises, Beijing and Shanghai, in about 4 and a half hours. Barely 11 years have passed from when the first high-speed rail lines started operation. Today, this is a small part of the world's largest, high-speed rail network. 38 000 kilometers of track will be laid by the end of 2025, with 3500 kilometers of that to be laid this year. It might be slower than taking a flight, but for some, it's much more convenient.

ANNA MARIA PASSENGER "When you go by plane, you have to be there at least one or two hours before the plane departs. For the train, you come to the station and it doesn't take so much time for preparation."

Speed is a theme written into the very DNA of the city, especially as far as its development is concerned. One gets the sense there's an unspoken race in progress to go faster, further and higher.

Before construction started around 2008, this side of the Huangpu River was home to factories. Today, it's home to the second tallest building, in the world, and a unique collection of super-tall structures – the Jian Mao Tower, and the Shanghai World Finance Center, which is the 9th tallest building in the world. The trio were completed roughly within a decade of each other.

At 632 meters, the Shanghai Tower cedes the title of tallest building in the world to the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai, but it does hold other records. This is home to the fastest elevators in the world, which can hit peak speeds of 18 meters per second. They're your gateway to some breathtaking views. The gentle twist in the tower reduces the force of incoming winds, even the region's potentially deadly typhoons. And to keep everything steady, there's a 1000-ton mass damper at the bottom of the building, to counter-act any movement triggered by strong wind.

RAMAH NYANG SHANGHAI "In many ways, this building is a metaphor for the rest of China, always on the cutting edge, and always trying to blend the old and the new, the foreign and the domestic. That perhaps is the best summary you can find for the China International Import Expo. It is, literally, a blend of all those ideas, new and old, foreign and domestic, all coming together in a city that's always been at the cutting edge of these things for so many years, and will be, for time to come. Ramah Nyang, CGTN, Shanghai."