Shanghai

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.

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 may be the best metro system in the world.

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: The 632-metre second-tallest building in the world, with a twisting silhouette designed to cut wind loads by a quarter. The observation deck on the 118th floor is reached by one of the world’s fastest elevators. The building twists 120 degrees from base to top – a structural solution that became an aesthetic one.

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. 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. The surrounding Bazaar is touristy but lively, with the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant for xiaolongbao.

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.

Eating Shanghai

Shanghainese cooking is slightly sweet, rich with soy, Shaoxing wine, and braising:

• Xiaolongbao: Soup dumplings. Bite a hole, sip the broth, eat. Nanxiang at Yu Garden made the dish famous. Small neighbourhood shops frequently make better versions than the tourist-facing chains.
• 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.

Practical Tips

A VPN installed before arrival is essential for most Western travellers – Google, Facebook, Instagram, and many other services are blocked. WeChat Pay and Alipay have international card integration now, allowing tourists to pay at most places without a Chinese bank account. Download Didi for rides. The Maglev train from Pudong airport reaches 430 km/h briefly on the way to the city, which is worth taking at least once.

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.

Day trips worth making: Suzhou by high-speed train (30 minutes) for UNESCO-listed classical gardens considerably less crowded than anything in Shanghai itself; Zhujiajiao by metro for arched bridges and canal teahouses. Both are half-day trips that give a completely different register of Chinese urban life.