A former seaport and textile town, Shanghai has grown into an international business centre with a burgeoning life-sciences sector. Bisected by the Huangpu River, the city has on its eastern bank the district of Pudong, known as 'New Shanghai' because of its golf courses, a high-speed mag-lev train that reaches 431 kilometres per hour and the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. Pudong is also home to the research labs of global pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis and Roche. Puxi, or 'Old Shanghai', on the western bank, boasts trendy French cafes and Shanghai's main research institutions — Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences and the Pasteur Institute of Shanghai.

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