SHANGHAI —You know those time-lapse videos of sunflowers sprouting, zipping straight up and bursting into bloom in the space of a few seconds? While flipping the TV channels in my hotel room, I saw a Chinese-language ad featuring a new variation: an entire city of skyscrapers popping out of the ground and rising heavenward at a miraculous speed.

Maybe that ad was created with modern technology. Or maybe it was just a real-time video of what has happened here in Shanghai. It has t ...

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