Sao Paulo was established by Jesuits in 1544. As few European women were willing to come to this arduous plateau, male colonists gradually got married with local Indian women, so that gave birth to a new race, the ancestors of the famous “pioneers” in Brazilian history.Today, Sao Paulo has become the world’s fourth largest city. The vast industrial parks display its great development potential, whose scale and up-to-dateness are rare in the world. Numerous skyscrapers, exquisite departments and extremely luxurious mansion with spacious courtyards boast of the abundant fortune of the business tycoons of the city.However, Sao Paulo also concentrates a large number of slums. A total of over 3 million poor people live in small broken houses built up with algams and wood boards, among which 2 million are “St. Paulers” (Paulista) and others are refugees from arid regions and immigrants as well as their offspring from destitute areas of northwest Brazil. Among the coloured races, there are about 600 thousand Japanese descendants, over 200 thousand Chinese emigants and over 100 thousand migrants from other Asian countries.Sao Paulo develops at an astonishing speed in modern times. Apart from that, its charm also lies in the endless melting of the new and the old as well as the extrinsic and the intrinsic.
