10 Top Places to Visit in Shanghai, China

Yu Garden was begun in 1559 by Pan Yunduan, a Ming dynasty official, as a private retirement garden for his father, and took nearly 20 years to complete. It covers two hectares of pavilions, carp ponds, rockeries and zigzag bridges, arranged on the classical principle that no visitor should see the whole garden from any single point. The Exquisite Jade Rock, a perforated boulder said to have been salvaged from a Song dynasty shipment, is the centrepiece.

The surrounding Yuyuan Bazaar is a separate matter - a dense grid of reconstructed traditional shopfronts selling souvenirs, silk and street food. Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant here has been making xiaolongbao since 1900 and the ground-floor takeaway queue moves faster than the upstairs dining rooms.

Pro Tip: Arrive at 8:30am for the garden opening and do the garden before the bazaar. By 11am the bazaar alleys are shoulder to shoulder and the garden's narrow corridors turn into a queue that moves in one direction only.

Shanghai Tower rises 632 metres, making it the tallest building in China and the second tallest in the world. Its observation deck on floor 118 sits at 546 metres and is reached by a lift that covers the distance in under a minute at 20.5 metres per second. The twisted facade is functional rather than decorative - the 120-degree rotation cuts wind load by around a quarter.

It stands in Lujiazui alongside the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center, the flat-topped building with the trapezoid opening near its summit. Thirty years ago this entire district was farmland and warehouses. Tickets for the Shanghai Tower deck run around CNY 180, and the Oriental Pearl Tower nearby is the cheaper and more dated alternative.

Pro Tip: Check visibility before buying. Shanghai haze regularly reduces the view to grey, and the ticket is non-refundable. Clear days most often follow rain or a cold front, and the hour before sunset gives you the city lit and unlit in one visit.

The Former French Concession was administered by France from 1849 until 1943, and the physical legacy is a district of low-rise villas, garden apartments and avenues lined with London plane trees that the French planted. It covers parts of Xuhui and Huangpu, and it looks and feels unlike anywhere else in the city.

Wukang Road is the best single street, anchored by the wedge-shaped Wukang Mansion of 1924, designed by the Hungarian-Slovak architect Laszlo Hudec. Anfu Road and Wuyuan Road carry independent coffee shops, wine bars and small galleries. Fuxing Park, laid out by the French in 1909, is where locals dance and play cards in the early morning.

Pro Tip: Walk this district rather than plan it. Start at Wukang Mansion, head east along Wukang Road and turn wherever the trees look best. Sunday mornings are quietest and the light through the plane trees between 8am and 10am is the reason photographers come here.

The Shanghai Museum holds around 140,000 objects across bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy, painting, jade, coins, seals and furniture. The ancient bronze gallery is the strongest of its kind anywhere, running from the Shang dynasty through to the Warring States period, and the ceramics gallery traces 8,000 years of Chinese pottery in a single circuit.

The 1996 building on People's Square was designed as a ding, the round-topped, square-based ritual cooking vessel that dominates the bronze collection. Entry is free but requires advance reservation through the museum's official channels, and daily numbers are capped. A newer and much larger East branch has opened in Pudong, so check which site holds the gallery you want.

Pro Tip: Book the reservation slot several days out and pick two galleries rather than attempting all eleven. Bronzes on the ground floor and painting on the third are the two that reward a slow visit; the rest can be walked in 20 minutes.

Nanjing Road has been the main commercial street of Shanghai since the 1850s and now carries close to a million visitors a day at peak periods. The eastern section between People's Square and the Bund is pedestrianised for 1.2 km, lined with department stores that date to the 1920s, neon signage stacked several storeys high, and a small tourist trolley that runs the length of it.

The western section beyond People's Square is a different street entirely - wider, less crowded and given over to luxury malls around Jing'an. For most visitors Nanjing East Road works best as the walking route between the Shanghai Museum and the Bund rather than as a shopping destination in its own right.

Pro Tip: Ignore anyone who approaches you in English offering a tea ceremony, an art student exhibition or a bar recommendation. Both scams operate heavily on this street and on the Bund approach, and the bill arrives at the end. A polite refusal without stopping ends it.

Tianzifang occupies a block of shikumen lane housing off Taikang Road, the stone-gate terraces that housed most of Shanghai's population in the early twentieth century. Artists began renting studios here in the late 1990s and the alleys now hold several hundred small galleries, craft shops, tea rooms and bars, squeezed into lanes barely two metres wide. Residents still live above many of them.

Xintiandi, 15 minutes north on foot, is the polished version of the same idea: shikumen facades rebuilt around a pedestrian plaza of restaurants and international brands. It is more comfortable and considerably less atmospheric. The Site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China sits on its southern edge and is free to enter.

Pro Tip: Enter Tianzifang from the Taikang Road No. 248 lane rather than the main No. 210 entrance, which absorbs the coach groups. Go on a weekday afternoon; weekend crowds make the narrower alleys single-file.

Jing'an Temple traces its founding to 247 AD, though it moved to this site in 1216 and the current buildings are a reconstruction completed in the 2000s after the temple served as a plastics factory during the Cultural Revolution. The rebuild used Burmese teak and traditional joinery, and the result is deliberately opulent - gold-leaf roofs, a 15-metre silver Guanyin statue and a 3.8-metre jade Buddha weighing 11 tonnes.

The setting is the point. The temple sits directly on top of a metro station in the middle of the Jing'an business district, with glass towers rising on all four sides and traffic on Nanjing West Road running past the gate. Admission is around CNY 50 and the complex takes 45 minutes to walk properly.

Pro Tip: The best photograph is from the pedestrian overpass at the Nanjing West Road junction, which lines up the golden roofs against the office towers behind. Late afternoon puts the sun behind the temple and lights the gold.

Zhujiajiao is a canal town of around 1,700 years standing, with 36 stone bridges and a grid of waterways lined by Ming and Qing dynasty houses. The five-arch Fangsheng Bridge from 1571 is the largest and the most photographed. Unlike the better-known canal towns further out in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Zhujiajiao sits inside the Shanghai municipality and connects directly to the metro.

The old town is compact enough to walk in two hours. Wooden boats work the main canal for around CNY 60 to 150 depending on the route, and the Kezhi Garden and the Qing dynasty post office are the two paid sites worth the entry. Beyond the central lanes, ordinary residential canals carry on with washing hung over the water.

Pro Tip: Take the first Line 17 train and arrive before 9am, ahead of the coach tours from central Shanghai. Cross to the north bank within ten minutes of arriving - the southern lanes hold the souvenir stalls, the northern ones hold the residents.

Public ferries have crossed the Huangpu River since 1911 and still run as ordinary commuter transport rather than as a tourist service. The Jinling East Road to Dongchang Road crossing takes about eight minutes, costs CNY 2 with a transport card, and delivers the same Pudong and Bund skyline that the sightseeing cruises charge upwards of CNY 120 for.

The boats are working vessels with scooters parked on the lower deck and commuters reading on the upper one. Services run roughly every 15 minutes from early morning until around 10pm. It is the most efficient way to combine the Bund and Lujiazui in one afternoon without doubling back through the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel or the metro.

Pro Tip: Ride eastward at dusk with the light behind you and the Pudong towers ahead. Stand at the bow rail on the upper deck rather than sitting inside, and avoid the 8am and 6pm commuter peaks when the deck fills with scooters.