Shanghai: How to Visit and What to Know
Shanghai: Two Centuries of Reinvention Happening Simultaneously
Shanghai has more coffee shops than any other city in the world, more than New York, more than London, more than Tokyo. That statistic, which sounds like a marketing claim, tells you something real about the French Concession’s plane-tree-lined streets: this is a city that absorbs influences at extraordinary speed and makes something distinctly its own from them. That compression is what makes Shanghai unlike any other Chinese city and unlike any other city anywhere.
| Key facts | |
|---|---|
| Price band | Y300-500/day budget to Y3,000+/day luxury |
| Best hours | The Bund at dusk, Yu Garden right at opening, museums 9am-5pm |
| Time needed | 3-7 days |
| Booking lead | None for the two Shanghai Museums since 2025; book Beijing or Xi’an rail tickets 1-2 weeks out |
Shanghai is two centuries of reinvention happening all at once. On the Huangpu River’s western shore sit the stately Beaux-Arts and Art Deco facades of the Bund, built in the 1920s and 1930s when Shanghai was the most cosmopolitan city in Asia. Directly opposite, across the water, a financial district of glass towers has grown in three decades, the Shanghai Tower (632 metres), the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Jin Mao together make one of the most recognisable skylines on earth. Between and around these two images lies a city of 25 million: lane neighbourhoods where residents cook on the street, French Concession boulevards lined with plane trees and boutiques, a Ming Dynasty garden a few blocks from a 600-year-old tea house, all threaded by what is now the world’s longest metro network by route length.
A Short History
Shanghai’s modern character began with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which opened it as a treaty port. British, French, and American concessions flourished. By the 1930s it was “the Paris of the East,” a phrase that actually meant something, with Russian emigres, Jewish refugees, jazz musicians, Chinese writers, and some of the world’s most innovative architects living and working alongside each other. The Japanese occupation, civil war, and the 1949 Communist victory closed the city to the world. Deng Xiaoping’s 1990 designation of Pudong as a special economic zone set Shanghai on its second great reinvention. The skyline across the river from the Bund is mostly the product of those three decades.
The Essential Sights
The Bund (Waitan): The 1.5-kilometre riverside promenade lined with 52 grand buildings in every architectural style from Beaux-Arts to neo-Renaissance. Walk from the Waibaidu Bridge past the former HSBC Building (with its magnificent 1923 banking hall, restored and worth stepping inside) to Yanan Road. The view across the Huangpu to Pudong’s skyline is the defining image of modern Shanghai and it earns the definition.
Shanghai Tower, Jin Mao, and the tower that’s currently closed: The 632-metre Shanghai Tower is the second-tallest building in the world, with a twisting silhouette designed to cut wind loads by a quarter, and its 118th-floor deck is reached by one of the world’s fastest elevators. Book a skip-the-line ticket on GetYourGuide to avoid the queue at the door. Jin Mao Tower’s 88th-floor deck runs noticeably cheaper and hands you the one view Shanghai Tower can’t offer, Shanghai Tower’s own silhouette. The Shanghai World Financial Center, the “bottle opener” between them, has had its observation decks closed for renovation since 2023 with no confirmed reopening, worth knowing before you plan a day around it.
Oriental Pearl Tower: Shanghai’s original skyline icon, a pink-and-purple sphere-stacked tower that predates all three supertalls, with a 259-metre glass skywalk and a genuinely under-visited history museum built into its base covering the concession era in more depth than most visitors realise is there.
Shanghai Museum and Shanghai Museum East: The original Shanghai Museum at People’s Square is one of the world’s great Chinese art museums, free entry, with outstanding galleries of bronze, ceramics, jade, painting, and calligraphy. Shanghai Museum East opened in Pudong in 2024 and is now running a joint exhibition with the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing bronze art, featuring 178 rare artefacts. As of policy changes through 2025, neither location requires an advance reservation for a standard visit anymore, walk-in with a passport at either one. Taken together, the two buildings represent one of the most significant expansions of a major art institution in Asia in recent years.
Yu Garden (Yuyuan): A Ming Dynasty classical garden created in 1577, preserved inside a tourist bazaar. The garden itself, dragon-shaped walls, rockeries, ornamental ponds, and pavilions, is genuinely good, closed Mondays. The surrounding bazaar is a separate, free, every-day-open thing, touristy but lively, with the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant for xiaolongbao, a distinction worth keeping straight since the two get conflated constantly.
Jing’an Temple: A heavily gilded, fully rebuilt Buddhist temple standing directly beneath Jing’an District’s office towers, the contrast between temple roofline and glass curtain wall behind it is the entire point. Free on the 1st and 15th of the lunar month.
Former French Concession (FFC): A residential district of plane-lined streets and 1920s and 1930s shikumen lane houses, now layered with boutiques, cafes, and small galleries. Wukang Road, from the Wukang Mansion down to Anfu Road, is the specific walk. On a weekday morning before the weekend crowds, it’s the most pleasant neighbourhood in the city.
West Bund: A riverside corridor of contemporary art with the Long Museum, Tank Shanghai, and a growing cluster of galleries. The most serious art-focused afternoon in Shanghai.
Where Fewer Tourists Go
Power Station of Art, a converted 1980s coal-fired plant on the Huangpu riverfront, holds China’s first state-run contemporary art museum with a free permanent collection. The Propaganda Poster Art Centre hides on the 7th floor of an ordinary Changning apartment complex, a private collection of Mao-era posters that most visitors never find because the building genuinely looks like nothing from the street. M50, the Moganshan Road art district, converted a former textile mill into Shanghai’s answer to Beijing’s 798, free to wander. And across Suzhou Creek in Hongkou, Duolun Road’s quieter 1920s literary street, the raw-concrete ramps of 1933 Old Millfun, and the Ohel Moshe Synagogue area, the site of Shanghai’s WWII Jewish refugee quarter, tell a genuinely different history from the standard concession-era story most guides repeat.
Eating Shanghai
Shanghainese cooking is slightly sweet, rich with soy, Shaoxing wine, and braising:
- Xiaolongbao: Soup dumplings. Bite a hole, sip the broth, eat. The dish traces to Nanxiang in the Jiangnan region, not to Din Tai Fung, which is a Taiwanese chain that popularised rather than invented it. Small neighbourhood shops like Jia Jia Tang Bao frequently make better versions than the tourist-facing chains.
- Shengjianbao: The pan-fried cousin of xiaolongbao, thicker wrapper, crisp on the bottom, steamed on top. Yang’s Fry Dumpling is the best-known chain; Da Hu Chun, dating to 1932, now holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
- Hong shao rou (red-braised pork belly): Pork with dark soy, rock sugar, and spices, cooked until the collagen melts. The defining Shanghainese dish and available everywhere, made well in most places.
- Shanghai hairy crab (da zha xie): In season October to November, eaten with ginger-vinegar dip. Worth planning a trip around if the timing works.
- Scallion-oil noodles (cong you mian): A bowl of wheat noodles tossed with crackled scallion oil and soy, transcendent in a way that defies its simplicity.
For the Michelin route: Taian Table has held three stars for five consecutive years and is the only three-star restaurant in Shanghai, a tasting menu focused on personal connections to Chinese ingredients. The 2026 guide lists 77 starred restaurants in the city overall. Fabula in Jing’an blends Cantonese and Ningbo heritage with European technique and received its first star in 2026. For something specifically in the French Concession: Franck Bistrot on Wukang Road is a proper French bistro whose steak tartare has a consistent claim to being the best in the city.
After dinner, the rooftop scene is a genuine strength here: FLAIR on the 58th floor of the Ritz-Carlton Pudong is the highest bar in the city and looks straight back at the Bund; Roosevelt Sky Bar and the newly revamped Spago at the St. Regis both sit inside historic Bund buildings.
Where to Stay
Compare current rates across neighborhoods on Agoda before you book. The Bund and Waitanyuan put you closest to the classic view and the heritage luxury hotels, the Fairmont Peace Hotel’s 1929 Art Deco original among them. The French Concession is the better pick for atmosphere over convenience, leafy and boutique-hotel-friendly. Xintiandi and Jing’an offer the most polished, central base for a first visit. Pudong makes sense only if you specifically want a room with a skyline view, the Park Hyatt occupies the SWFC’s upper floors, since you’re then a river crossing from most of the historic sightseeing above.
Practical Tips
A VPN installed before arrival is essential for most Western travellers, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and many other services are blocked, and VPN sites are themselves blocked once you’re already inside the country, so set it up and test it at home first. WeChat Pay and Alipay have international card integration now, allowing tourists to pay at most places without a Chinese bank account, and since June 2025 foreign contactless cards can also tap directly at Metro turnstiles with no app setup at all. Download Didi for rides. The Maglev train from Pudong airport reaches speeds well over 400 km/h on the way to the city (its historic 431 km/h peak has been suspended since 2021, current commercial speed varies by source), worth taking at least once purely for the novelty, though it terminates at Longyang Road, still a Metro transfer from downtown.
Near the Bund and Nanjing Road East, watch for the tea ceremony scam: a friendly stranger, often posing as a student wanting to “practice English,” steers you toward an unnamed venue and a bill running into the thousands of yuan. A legitimate tea sit-down runs Y50-200 with a printed menu; never follow the invitation, choose your own venue instead.
The Louis Vuitton museum opened in June 2025 near the Bund, a ship-shaped building with a history of the house through themed exhibition spaces. Worth an hour if the fashion-history angle interests you.
The one out-of-town trip that genuinely belongs on a Shanghai-focused visit is Zhujiajiao, a Ming and Qing-era canal town about 70 minutes by metro, arched bridges and canal teahouses giving a completely different register of Chinese urban life for a half-day. Suzhou and Hangzhou are both excellent, both a short bullet-train ride further out, and both belong to a different kind of trip entirely, one I’ve written up separately in our Shanghai as your gateway to China guide rather than folding in here. For the practical day-by-day version of everything above, our itineraries build it out properly.