Shanghai (上海 — "on the sea," though the sea is actually 50km to the east via the Yangtze estuary) is the largest city in China (24 million residents in the municipality) and the financial and commercial capital of the world's second-largest economy: a city that in one generation has gone from the partially derelict former colonial concession city of the 1990s to one of the most dramatic urban landscapes on earth — the Pudong skyline (the Oriental Pearl Tower 1994, Jin Mao Tower 1999, Shanghai World Financial Center 2008, Shanghai Tower 2015 — four iconic skyscrapers built in 21 years) rises directly across the Huangpu River from the Bund (the 1.5km of Edwardian and Art Deco colonial bank buildings from 1910–1936 — when Shanghai was the most cosmopolitan and financially powerful city in Asia, the "Paris of the East," with British, French, American and Japanese concession zones each with their own architecture, police and law). The contrast between these two waterfronts — one of colonial imperial grandeur, one of 21st-century ambition — is the most striking urban image in the world. Shanghai's food is the most refined regional cuisine in China after Cantonese: xiaolongbao (the soup dumpling invented in Shanghai in the 19th century), Shanghainese red-braised pork belly, hairy crab (a Shanghai autumn obsession), and the dumplings and noodles of the Chenghuang Miao (City God Temple) area.
The Bund (外滩 Wàitān — the 1.5km waterfront promenade of colonial buildings on the west bank of the Huangpu River: 52 buildings in Gothic, Baroque, Romanesque, Renaissance, Classicist, Beaux-Arts, Art Deco and Chinese Eclectic styles, built 1904–1936 by British, American, French, Italian, German and Japanese banks and trading houses when Shanghai was the financial capital of Asia — the HSBC Building (1923, the finest Neoclassical building in Asia), the Customs House (1927, Big Ching — the clock tower based on Big Ben), the Fairmont Peace Hotel (1929, Art Deco — the green pyramidal copper roof). At dawn the Bund is quiet: the Huangpu River below, the rising sun behind the Pudong skyscrapers across the water.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideYù Yuán (豫园 — the Garden of Peace and Comfort, built 1559–1577 for the Pan family, one of the finest surviving Ming Dynasty private gardens in China: 5 acres of rockeries (the Great Rockery — 14m, the tallest in China — took 4 years to build and uses yellow stone from Zhejiang), pavilions, ponds, bridges and corridors. The surrounding Chenghuang Miao (City God Temple) bazaar is the most atmospheric old quarter in Shanghai: the zigzag bridge over the carp pond, the Nine-Turn Bridge (九曲桥) and the xiaolongbao shop of Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant (the most famous soup dumpling restaurant in Shanghai, queue 45 minutes, worth every minute).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideXiaolongbao (小笼包 — the soup dumpling: a paper-thin wheat wrapper containing pork mince with aspic gelatin which melts to liquid soup as the dumpling steams — invented in Shanghai in the 19th century, perfected at Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant in the Yu Garden bazaar, the most famous xiaolongbao address in China). The technique: place the dumpling on a spoon, bite a small hole, slurp the hot soup, then eat the dumpling. They are piping hot and the soup inside is extremely hot.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Lujiazui skyline (Pudong — the four iconic towers: the Oriental Pearl Tower (1994 — the pink and white sphere-on-pillar the most whimsical, 468m), Jin Mao Tower (1999 — 88 floors, the pagoda-inspired stainless steel tower), the Shanghai World Financial Center (2008 — 492m, the "bottle opener" — the trapezoidal aperture at the top was originally designed as a circle but changed for political sensitivity) and Shanghai Tower (2015 — 632m, the second tallest building in the world, with the world's fastest elevator: 64km/h, the observation deck at 561m). Best at dusk from the Bund or from the Pearl Tower's observation deck.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideNew Heights (6th floor, Three on the Bund building, 3 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu — the best rooftop terrace view of the Pudong skyline from the Bund: the neon Pudong towers reflecting in the Huangpu River at night, with modern Chinese and international cuisine and one of the finest wine lists in Shanghai). The signature dish: the red-braised pork belly (hong shao rou — the Shanghai slow-cooked pork with soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine, rock sugar and star anise, the defining Shanghai dish).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Former French Concession (法租界 Fǎ Zūjiè — the autonomous French territory of Shanghai from 1849–1943: the tree-lined avenues (the plane trees from the 1920s make the streets tunnels of green in summer), the Art Deco and Tudor villas, the mansions of Shanghai's Jewish Sephardic merchant families (the Kadoories, the Sassoons, the Hardoons), the shikumen (stone-gate houses — the uniquely Shanghainese terrace housing hybrid combining the Jiangnan courtyard house with the European terrace row house). Wukang Road (武康路 — the most photographed street in Shanghai: the Wukang Mansion (1924, Art Deco, shaped like a ship prow at the convergence of three roads), a UNESCO Creative City heritage street.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideTianzifang (田子坊 — Taikang Road, 泰康路 — the 1920s shikumen (stone-gate house) alley complex converted to art studios, galleries, cafés and boutiques from 2001: the finest example of Shanghai's adaptive reuse of its Shikumen heritage, with narrow lanes, artists' studios, ceramic workshops, contemporary Chinese art galleries and the most atmospheric lunch spots in the city. The Shikumen Open House Museum inside gives the best sense of how these houses functioned as family homes.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Ohel Moishe Synagogue (犹太难民纪念馆 — Changyang Road 62, Hongkew District — the Russian-Jewish synagogue of 1927 that became the heart of the Designated Area (the "Ghetto") where 18,000 stateless Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe were confined by the Japanese occupation authorities from 1941–1945. Shanghai was the only city in the world that accepted Jewish refugees without a visa during WWII. The museum documents: the refugees' journey (crossing the USSR by Trans-Siberian Railway, arriving in Shanghai with nothing), the community they built, the German pressure on Japan to deport them (resisted by the Japanese), and the liberation.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideXintiandi (新天地 — the preserved shikumen block in Luwan district converted to Shanghai's most upscale restaurant, bar and boutique district: the Communist Party First National Congress Site (the house where the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921) is directly in the middle of the luxury dining district — an irony not lost on Shanghainese. The stone lanes and original shikumen architecture are perfectly preserved; the contents are entirely high-end Shanghai modernity.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Shanghai Museum (上海博物馆 — People's Square — one of the greatest museums of Chinese art in the world: 120,000 artefacts spanning 6,000 years, with the finest collections of Bronze Age vessels (the Shang and Zhou dynasty bronzes — the technical mastery of 3,000-year-old casting), ancient Chinese furniture (the most complete collection in a public museum), calligraphy (the greatest art form in Chinese culture), and the Ming and Qing dynasty paintings gallery. Free and extraordinarily well-curated (English labels throughout).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideNanjing Road East (南京东路 — the pedestrian shopping boulevard from People's Square to the Bund: 5.5km, over 600 shops, the most walked shopping street in the world (over 1 million people per day): the Shiatzy Chen boutiques, the Chinese department stores (the No. 1 Department Store — 第一百货, opened 1934), the Laosizi (the century-old enamelware shop), and the food stalls selling freshly made sesame noodles and sweetened lotus paste pastries.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Shanghai Maglev (磁浮列车 — Pudong Airport to Longyang Road station: 30.5km in 7 minutes and 20 seconds at 431 km/h (the world's fastest commercial train speed). Even if not heading to the airport, many visitors take the return journey (¥80) just for the experience: the train accelerates from 0 to 431 in 2 minutes, the passing landscape blurs to grey, the GPS speed display climbs past 300 and 400 km/h. An extraordinary ride.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Long Bar (Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund — the restored 1911 Shanghai Club building, the most exclusive British club in pre-revolutionary Shanghai, where the Long Bar (the longest bar in Asia at 33.5 metres, the famous hierarchical seating: British merchants at the window end, the Chinese staff at the other) has been restored to its Edwardian splendour. A Shanghai Sling or an Old Fashioned in the room where the colonial hierarchy of pre-war Shanghai was most visibly expressed.