It all began in a Shanghai hotel

Shanghai may have impressed many as China's metropolis of finance, fashion and food, but when it comes to Sino-US relations, the municipality displaced Beijing as the scene of a milestone event.

A 1,200-square-meter hall in the center of Jinjiang Hotel in Shanghai's downtown area is famous for being the birthplace of Sino-US relations. It was there that then-US president Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique, also known as the Joint Communique of the United States of America and the People's Republic of China, at the conclusion of his China trip in 1972.

The weeklong visit to the country by Nixon, who also stopped for meetings in Beijing and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, was the first made by a US president to the People's Republic of China, the first key step in normalizing relations between the two countries.