Beyond the blue and cool (2)

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As a result, the Shanghai Municipal Health Inspection Institute launched a pilot program at the beginning of summer, aimed at improving water quality benchmarks beyond even national standards, by monitoring pool water around the clock using the Internet.

According to Zhou Yanqin, deputy director of the institute, the monitoring equipment will allow inspectors to oversee pool water quality from their office computers and they can send out alerts if and when standards slip.

Five-star hotels are taking their own initiative and measures.

"We have both an automatic monitoring system and every-two-hour water quality checks," says Yang Lei, the spa manager at Park Hyatt Hotel.

If pools in the Pudong area are all about height and vertigo-inducing effects, the ones tucked inside the century-old Bund area across the Huangpu River are centered on history and retro chic.

The art deco pool at the Peninsula Hotel Shanghai is an example.

Fringed by palm trees under a glass dome, the pool gets its startling Mediterranean look from blue-and-white mosaics. To swim inside is like being part of an oil painting, and the soothing music from the underwater sound system shimmers with the ripples. The mosaic also serves as a guardian of water quality, as its geometry may get distorted by impurities in the water.

The balconies by the pool look to the ultra lush greenery from the garden of the former British consulate and is currently one of the hottest spots to suntan in seclusion. The pool is only open to hotel guests, which makes it even more exclusive.

Traveling inside the former French Concession, the indoor swimming pool housed at the legendary InterContinental Shanghai Ruijin Hotel is reminiscent of the golden age of Shanghai in the 1920s.

The pool may be a new addition, but it is smoothly integrated into the 100-acre century-old art deco and French-provincial style estate, built by British horse racing tycoon H E Morris and once the residence of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling.

The pool is now open to hotel guests and those willing to pay a minimum of 2,500 yuan for the monthly membership card.

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