Hotels in Shanghai

Shanghai is China's commercial capital and its most outward-facing city, split by the Huangpu River into two very different halves. On the west bank, the Bund's colonial banking houses front a promenade built in the 1920s; on the east, Pudong's skyscrapers went up almost entirely after 1990.

Between those two skylines the city is more textured than it first appears. The former French Concession has plane-tree avenues and 1930s villas, the Yu Garden quarter preserves classical Ming landscaping, and neighbourhoods like Tianzifang and Jing'an mix lane housing with galleries and bars. The metro is one of the largest networks in the world and reaches almost everywhere worth going.

Shanghai also functions as a base for the Yangtze Delta. The canal towns of Zhujiajiao and Tongli are an hour out, and high-speed trains reach Suzhou in 25 minutes and Hangzhou's West Lake in under an hour.