Shanghai 上海

1

Ming dynasty rockeries, pavilions and the zigzag bridge of City God Temple area.

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China's tallest building; observation deck on the 118th floor.

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17-bridge canal town 45 km from downtown; gondolas under Ming bridges.

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Colonial riverfront facing Pudong's sci-fi skyline; walk it at dusk both ways.

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Shanghai's calling card and a microcosm of its modern history: a 1.5 km riverside stretch on the west bank of the Huangpu River, running north from Waibaidu Bridge (Garden Bridge) to Yan'an East Road, is lined with 52 historic buildings in Gothic, Baroque, Art Deco and other styles, collectively known as the "World Architecture Exhibition"

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The heart of Pudong's financial-district skyline: Shanghai Tower, at 632 m China's tallest building, rises in a twisting spiral form that reduces wind load; its 546 m "Top of Shanghai" observatory ranks among the world's highest, and on floor 125 you can see the thousand-ton damper nicknamed the "magic needle that steadies the building"

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A 468 m TV tower completed in 1994, once the tallest tower in Asia: three 9 m-diameter slanted columns support 11 spheres of varying sizes, inspired by the verse "pearls large and small falling onto a plate of jade"

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Runs east from the Bund to People's Square in the west, about 1.5 km in total length; one of China's earliest commercial pedestrian streets

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A Jiangnan private garden built from the Ming Jiajing era by Pan Yunduan, Provincial Administration Commissioner of Sichuan, covering about 2 hectares with more than 30 pavilions and towers and famed as "the most exquisite garden in Jiangnan": its star treasure, the Exquisite Jade Rock, is a Taihu stone uniting the four classic qualities of "slenderness, wrinkles, perforations and transparency"; the Great Rockery was the work of Ming dynasty rockery master Zhang Nan…

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A shopping and leisure district converted from shikumen lane houses in the Taipingqiao area, opened in 2001; exposed brick walls, black-lacquered doors and stone door frames preserve the shikumen form: the North Block (Beili) centers on restaurants, bars and boutiques, while the South Block (Nanli) blends in new architecture

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A creative district around Lane 210, Taikang Road, formed from a mix of shikumen (stone-gate) lane houses and lane factories; named "Tianzifang" in 1998 (after the ancient painter Tian Zifang), where artists such as Chen Yifei successively moved into the old factory buildings to open studios

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Wukang Mansion, originally named Normandie Apartments, was designed in 1924 by the Hungarian architect László Hudec; its ship-shaped footprint unfolds across the intersection of six roads, and its ground-floor arcades and red-brick facade make it one of Shanghai's earliest veranda-style apartment buildings

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Anfu Road is famous for the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, with stage plays running year-round; the select shops, bakeries, and cafés along it form a model of "street life"

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An L-shaped, 550-meter-long small street in Hongkou District, hailed as "one Duolun Road, a hundred years of Shanghai"

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Originally the Shanghai Municipal Council Slaughterhouse, designed and completed in 1933 by the British designer Balfours, it is a 5-story reinforced-concrete building: umbrella-shaped columns, 26 covered bridges, and a "hui" (回) shaped circulation route — circular outside, square inside — that kept livestock moving one way and people and animals apart, arguably the largest slaughterhouse in the Far East at the time...

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A preserved cluster of garden villas and lane-house buildings at 51-95 Sinan Road, totaling 31 protected historic buildings

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The banks of Suzhou Creek (Wusong River) formed modern Shanghai's belt of national industry, with former flour and textile factory sites stretching in succession, now converted into riverside walkways and an art district

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Huaihai East Road, formerly known as Avenue Joffre, runs about 6 km and has been the fashion center of the 'Paris of the East' since the early 20th century; today malls such as iapm and K11 line the street, with tree-lined boulevards and shop-window culture sustaining its elegant commercial character

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Tradition has it that the temple was first built in 247 AD (the 10th year of the Chiwu era of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period), predating the founding of Shanghai city; Jing'an District takes its name from the temple

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One of Shanghai's oldest ancient temples, traditionally founded during the Wuyue Kingdom of the Five Dynasties period—some accounts trace it back to Eastern Wu of the Three Kingdoms—destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly through the ages

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Completed in 1882 (the 8th year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty), named for two white-jade Sakyamuni statues brought back from Burma in the late Qing: the Jade Buddha Chamber enshrines a seated Buddha about 1.95 m tall carved from a single block of white jade, and the Reclining Buddha Hall holds a white-jade reclining Buddha—lustrous jade with exquisite carving

22

Formally named St. Ignatius Cathedral; its foundation stone was laid in 1906 and it was completed in 1910—a French Gothic red-brick cathedral with twin towers over 50 meters tall, known as the 'largest cathedral in the Far East'

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Formerly known as Moore Memorial Church, Mu'en Church was completed in 1929; a Gothic red-brick church with a pointed spire standing beside People's Square, it seats over 1,000 inside and is a leading example of Shanghai's large Protestant churches

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A national-level major museum positioned as a "museum of ancient Chinese art", founded in 1952; the People's Square branch, with its round ding-vessel shape, became a city landmark, and in 2024 the East Branch fully opened, doubling the space

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A national-level art museum converted from the China Pavilion "Oriental Crown" of Expo 2010 Shanghai, opened in 2012: its great red dougong-bracket form rises in stacked, outward-reaching tiers, evoking "a flourishing China, the granary of the world"—a permanent landmark of the Expo site

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A large science and technology museum themed "Nature, People, Technology", opened in 2001

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A "green spiral"-shaped building in Jing'an Sculpture Park, opened in 2015 with 45,000 square meters of floor space; one of China's top natural history museums, its lineage traces back to the 1868 Xujiahui Museum and the 1956 Shanghai Natural History Museum

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By Dishui Lake in Lingang, opened in 2021, the world's largest planetarium by building scale: its architecture takes "celestial orbits" as the design motif, with sweeping curves and right-angle-free spaces creating a cosmic feel

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Converted from the main plant building of the Nanshi Power Plant and opened in 2012, it is mainland China's first public contemporary art museum: the 165-meter chimney and its thermometer installation are a landmark on the Huangpu riverfront, while the main building's trusses and coal hoppers preserve the industrial texture

30

The only official museum and documentation center of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), opened in 2017: the building consists of two parts, the 'Valley of History' and the 'Cloud of Celebration', with its cloud-shaped glass canopy an architectural marvel

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In Hongkou's Tilanqiao historic district: from 1933 to 1941 Shanghai took in some 20,000 European Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, and the Tilanqiao 'ghetto' thus became known as 'Noah's Ark'

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Opened in June 2016 as mainland China's first Disney resort, comprising the theme park and Disneytown, which is free to enter

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A large ocean theme park in Nanhui New Town, Lingang, opened in 2018: it specializes in polar marine life, with orca shows and the penguin and polar bear habitats as star attractions; the giant tank of the Volcano Whale Shark Hall and the iceberg-shaped polar zone form its signature scenery

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A time-honored Shanghai amusement park opened in 1985, located in the Meilong area: its Ferris wheel was once an iconic ride in Shanghai, and the evening lights and the Ferris wheel's night views carry the memories of generations of locals

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A large theme park at Sheshan in Songjiang, opened in 2009: Wooden Coaster (Gumu Youlong) is one of East China's first wooden roller coasters, and thrill rides such as the Jueding Xiongfeng giant pendulum, Tiandi Shuangxiong drop towers and Perfect Storm are densely packed

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ERA “Intersection of Time”, the resident show at Shanghai Circus World, has been running since 2005 and is a flagship production combining Chinese acrobatics with multimedia: the Globe of Death motorcycle act (several motorcycles speeding simultaneously inside a steel sphere) is its signature, with thrilling acrobatics such as the flying trapeze and teeterboard accompanied by sound…

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Pudong's largest urban park, covering 140 hectares, completed and opened in 2000: laid out around expansive lawns, Mirror Lake (Jingtian Lake) and a rural countryside zone; the spring plum blossom festival and holiday music-and-fireworks events are traditional fixtures

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A national-level botanical garden on the south side of Sheshan in Songjiang, opened in 2011: the Quarry Garden transformed the deep pit of a century-old quarry into a waterfall garden, a classic case of ecological restoration of an abandoned mine

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A large comprehensive botanical garden in Xuhui District, formerly the Longhua Nursery established in 1974: it features a display greenhouse complex, the Penjing Garden (renowned for Shanghai-style penjing) and specialty gardens such as the Magnolia Garden; the spring flower show and the summer “Seeking the Night Elves” nature-observation event are hugely popular

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A “forest-style” park north of the Yangpu riverfront: named after the woods planted by Communist Youth League volunteers in 1958, opened in 1986, with lush trees and crisscrossing waterways

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A vast suburban park in Baoshan District covering about 430 hectares, one of the largest parks in Shanghai: every March it hosts the Shanghai Cherry Blossom Festival, with over 10,000 cherry trees lining several kilometers of cherry-viewing waterways—one of the largest cherry-blossom venues in East China, with bloom-season crowds in the hundreds of…

42

An ecological park in Gaoqiao Town, Pudong, at the confluence of the Huangpu and Yangtze rivers, opened in 2007: the river-viewing platform where three waters meet offers magnificent vistas; wetland boardwalks, native woodland, and lawns interweave, making it a great Shanghai spot for sunrises over the Yangtze estuary and migratory birds

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An archaeological site park in Songjiang University Town: the Guangfulin site is a settlement site spanning the Neolithic Age to the Eastern Zhou period; the unearthed “Guangfulin Culture” remains filled a gap in the late-Neolithic cultural sequence around Lake Tai, and these early inhabitants' relics pushed back Shanghai's settlement history considerably—hence the name “Root of Shan…

44

A Jiangnan water town on the shore of Dianshan Lake in Qingpu, long known as the “Venice of Shanghai”: it had become a market town by the Song and Yuan dynasties and flourished in the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty on the cotton cloth and rice trade

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A water town in Minhang District, the closest to downtown Shanghai: the name Qibao (“Seven Treasures”) derives from the Five Dynasties-era Qibao Temple and the legend of the “seven treasures”; it was already a market town by the Northern Song dynasty and a prosperous town of Songjiang Prefecture in the Ming and Qing

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A Jiangnan ancient town in Jinshan District on the historic border between Wu and Yue, once known as “Furong Town”: founded as a town in the Song dynasty, it was a distribution hub for cotton textiles and rice in the Ming and Qing, as the old saying goes “two bridges every three steps, ten lanes in one glance”

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An authentic water town in the heart of Pudong New Area: founded in the Southern Song dynasty, it prospered after the Xiasha salt works moved south, and in the Ming and Qing dynasties was known for its “thirteen archways and nine huanlong bridges” (numerous memorial archways and stone bridges)

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A 500-year-old land-reclamation town in Pujiang Town, Minhang District: in the Ming dynasty, locals built a tower here and rang a bell to summon farmers to till the fields, which gave “Zhaojialou” its name — one of the origin symbols of Pudong's agrarian civilization

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A water town in southwestern Qingpu District and the hometown of Chen Yun: the Chen Yun Former Residence and Qingpu Revolutionary History Museum on Xiatang Street systematically presents his life and deeds

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The only natural hilly woodland on Shanghai's mainland (main peak approx. 100 m), split into East Sheshan and West Sheshan: Sheshan Observatory on West Sheshan, founded in 1900, once held the largest-aperture refracting telescope in the Far East and is now the Shanghai Astronomy Museum

51

China's third-largest island and the world's largest alluvial estuary island, formed by Yangtze River sediment: it first surfaced during the Wude era of the Tang dynasty and has alternated between growth and erosion for more than 1,300 years — “Chongming” means “esteeming brightness”

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A man-made beach resort on the north shore of Hangzhou Bay in Jinshan District: shore-protection dams enclose a clear-water swimming area and fine sand shipped in from elsewhere paves the beach — the flagship of seaside holidays in Shanghai

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A man-made seawater swimming beach in the Fengxian Bay Tourist Area: breakwaters enclose and purify the seawater, with sand laid to form a beach—Shanghai's main seaside swimming experience in the suburbs (summer only)

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A circular man-made lake 2.6 km in diameter, dug in 2002—the "blue heart" of Lingang New City: three islands at its center, a lakeside scenic belt linking the "three venues" of China Maritime Museum, Shanghai Astronomy Museum and Haichang Ocean Park, with complete lakeside cycling paths and campsites

Yu Garden original since 1900; the birthplace of xiaolongbao.

Old-school Shengjian and noodle houses behind People's Square.

Paper-thin dumplings hiding pork and hot gelatin broth.