A treaty port that became a skyline. Five days in China's biggest city, with the entry rules and apps sorted out first.
Photo: Phlizz, CC BY-SA 4.0
Beijing has the emperors. Shanghai has the bankers. The port opened to foreign trade in 1843, and for the next hundred years the strip of land along the Huangpu River filled up with banks, hotels, clubs and consulates from a dozen countries. The Bund is what is left of that world, and since the 1990s it has faced a second skyline across the water in Pudong, built by a Shanghai that was no longer taking orders from anyone. The two banks of the river tell the story better than any museum.
It is not the China of temples and dynasties, though there is a Ming dynasty garden in the old city and a different kind of garden culture an hour away in Suzhou. It is the China of dumplings eaten standing up, of plane-tree streets in the old French Concession, of towers that light up at night and a metro that gets you almost anywhere for a few yuan. Five days is a good length: enough for the Bund and the old city, a full day in Pudong, a slow day in the French Concession, a day trip to Suzhou and a last day for People's Square and Jing'an. It is also enough time to get used to a country that runs on Alipay and WeChat, where Google does not open, and where a high-speed train ticket needs your passport.
The plan is built day by day, one area at a time. Day one is the old city and the Bund, day two Pudong and the Shanghai Museum East, day three the French Concession, day four the Suzhou gardens, day five People's Square and Jing'an. Start on a Tuesday: the new museum building in Pudong is closed on Tuesdays (so Pudong goes on Wednesday), the Suzhou Museum is closed on Mondays (so Suzhou goes on Friday, away from the weekend crowds), and day five lands on a Saturday when the People's Square museum is open. For the bigger picture see our China country page. The practical part, visa-free entry, paying, internet and trains, is in the tips at the end and worth reading before you book.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
A Ming dynasty garden, the best-known soup dumplings in the old city, and the waterfront banks that made Shanghai rich.
Chinese art in the new museum, the skyline up close, a tower at sunset and a hairy crab dinner.
A park morning, stone-gate lanes, plane-tree streets and a Russian-style dinner in the old French Concession.
Half an hour by high-speed train to a city of classical gardens, a museum by I. M. Pei and a canal street.
The city model, a museum with a single big show, the pedestrian street and a Buddhist temple among the shopping malls.
Start in the old city while the garden is quiet and finish on the river as the lights come on. The trap is timing: the garden closes between 16:30 and 17:00 depending on the season, and the dumpling shop queue peaks at lunchtime, so be at the garden when it opens and eat late or early.
A scholar-official named Pan Yunduan started Yu Garden in 1559 as a place for his father, the minister Pan En, to spend his old age. The name means "pleasing and satisfying to one's parents". Pan was then posted to Sichuan as governor, so the garden took until 1577 to finish. It did not fare well after that: British troops used the Huxinting teahouse as a base in 1842, and the Small Swords Society had its headquarters in the Dianchun Hall from 1853 to 1855, after which little of the original survived. The garden was rebuilt between 1956 and 1961 and became a national monument in 1982.
It is small, about two hectares, and the trick is how it packs six sections into that space with undulating "dragon walls" and zigzag corridors. Look for the Exquisite Jade Rock, a porous 3.3 meter, five ton boulder, and the 12 meter rockery near the Sansui Hall. It is a Suzhou-style garden in the middle of Shanghai, and a good rehearsal for day four. Be at the gate at opening: by 10:30 the tour groups arrive and you spend your time looking at the back of heads.
The garden sits inside a tourist zone: the City God Temple, the Huxinting teahouse at the end of the Nine-turn Bridge, and the Yuyuan Bazaar, a maze of Ming-style shopfronts selling silk, tea, jade, chopsticks and a lot of souvenirs. It is shopping rather than history, and the buildings are new in the old style.
Come for the snacks and the people-watching, not for the shops. Walk through once, find the stalls with the longest queues of locals, and eat something small.
The soup dumpling, xiaolongbao, is generally believed to have started in Nanxiang, a village that is now part of Shanghai's Jiading district, and evolved from the soup-filled buns of Kaifeng. The Nanxiang Bun Shop traces its origins to 1900, when its founder Wu Xiangsheng opened a restaurant in Nanxiang and then moved a branch to the City God Temple, where the temple-goers were. The state took it over after 1949 and it still belongs to a government-owned company. The shop says it has been passed down six generations, and in 2024 it brought back its morning tea service after about 20 years.
Order the pork xiaolongbao, add a crab roe version if you want to splurge, and eat them the way the locals do. Lift one with your chopsticks into the spoon, bite a small hole, drink the soup, then eat the dumpling dipped in black vinegar with ginger. It is touristy and the queue is real, so it is not the cheapest or the best dumpling in town, but it is the one with a century of history behind it. Go before 11:00 or after 14:00 to skip the worst of it.
The word "bund" was borrowed from Hindustani and originally meant an embankment. The Chinese name means "outer bank", to tell this stretch of the river from the "inner bank" next to the old city. From the 1860s to the 1930s this was the rich and powerful center of the foreign establishment in Shanghai. Banks and trading houses from Britain, France, the United States, Japan and other countries built their offices here in the Beaux Arts style, and a few echo the waterfront of Liverpool. After 1949 many financial institutions moved to Hong Kong, hotels were converted, and the colonial statues came down.
Walk it slowly on the raised promenade, which sits some 10 meters above street level because of a levee built after typhoon floods. Look across the road for the Customs House at No. 13, built in 1927 with a clock and bell copied from Big Ben, and the former HSBC building at No. 12. Then turn around and look at Pudong. The contrast between the stone banks and the glass towers is why people come, and it works best on a clear afternoon when the light is low.
The Peace Hotel was built by Victor Sassoon as Sassoon House and finished in 1929, the first high-rise he built and one of the first tall buildings in the Far East. It was designed by Palmer and Turner in Art Deco, with a green copper pyramid roof, and part of it became the Cathay Hotel, with a floor of "national suites" each decorated in a different style. After 1949 the building passed to the city, and in 1956 it became the Peace Hotel.
You do not need to sleep here. Look at the facade from the corner of Nanjing Road and the Bund, step into the lobby if the hotel is letting non-guests in, and then follow Nanjing Road East away from the river. That is the start of the pedestrian street you will come back to on day five.
End the day at Waibaidu Bridge, called the Garden Bridge in English, where Suzhou Creek meets the Huangpu. It opened on 20 January 1908 and is China's first all-steel bridge and the only surviving camelback truss bridge in the country. It makes a good frame for photos of the skyline.
Sunset in winter is around 17:00, so from November the lights come on early and you can do the whole walk in the dark. If you want to see the skyline from the water, sightseeing boats leave from piers along the Bund in the evening, but prices differ a lot between the operator and resellers. Many people prefer to just walk the promenade again and cross over to Pudong on day two.
Pudong is where Shanghai shows off, so pick a clear day. The Shanghai Museum East is closed on Tuesdays, which is why Pudong is day two of a Tuesday start and not day one. Buy your tower ticket before you go, and check the visibility forecast: haze can empty the view.
The famous Shanghai Museum is a round-topped, square-based building on People's Square, opened in 1996 and shaped like an ancient bronze ding vessel to echo the old idea of a round sky over a square earth. But as of July 2026 that building hosts only one exhibition, a show on the ancient civilizations of the Americas that runs until 14 November 2027. The permanent collection, which has over 120,000 pieces, now lives in the new Shanghai Museum East on Century Avenue in Pudong.
The East building has 13 permanent galleries. Go for the bronzes, ceramics, jade, painting and calligraphy, and ignore anything that makes your feet hurt. Two hours gets you the highlights, three if you like seals and coins. It is a calm place and a good way to understand what the gardens of Suzhou, on day four, were trying to express.
Lujiazui is the financial district on the Pudong side. The three supertall towers are the Jin Mao Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Shanghai Tower, standing side by side, and in front of them the pink spheres of the Oriental Pearl Tower, the icon from the first wave of Pudong building. The elevated circular footbridge, the Lujiazui Ring, puts you at the right height to see all of them at once.
You do not have to pay to go up the Pearl. Walk the ring, take your photos, and save your money for the tall tower in the next stop. If you do want a second view, the Shanghai World Financial Center has its own deck and is usually the cheaper option.
The Shanghai Tower is 632 meters tall, with 128 stories, the tallest building in China and the third tallest in the world by height to architectural top. Work began on 29 November 2008, the building topped out on 4 August 2013 and opened gradually from 2015. Its twisting, tiered shape was designed by Gensler, the American firm, and it has the highest observation deck in the world on its upper floors. The sightseeing deck on the 118th floor is the one most visitors use.
Pick this tower over the others because it is the tallest and gives you the full bend of the Huangpu, with the Bund on one side and Pudong on the other. Plan your arrival around 16:00 so you see the city in daylight, at sunset and with the lights on. The honest verdict: the deck is behind glass, the elevator queue can be long, and on a hazy day you pay for a white wall. Check the weather before you buy.
After the tower, walk down to the river. From the Pudong promenade you get the other half of the Bund: the old banks on the opposite bank lit up and the river traffic in front. It is where most of the postcards of the Bund are taken, and it is quieter than the Bund itself.
Stay until the lights are fully on and the barges go by. Then take the Metro back across, or walk to the Lujiazui station on Line 2.
From the autumn, roughly October to early December, the dish to eat in Shanghai is the hairy crab, a variety of Chinese mitten crab. It is steamed whole with ginger and eaten with a dip of rice vinegar, sugar and ginger, and the meat can be mixed with lard into xiefen, or eaten in xiaolongbao or with tofu. Yangcheng Lake near Suzhou has the best name.
Sit down for it in the evening and ask the price per crab before it comes to the table, because size and quality swing the bill. Out of season, replace it with a Shanghainese dinner of red-braised pork and lion's head meatballs (see the food section).
This is the day to slow down. The French Concession is large, so the plan hops between areas by metro or taxi. Wear flat shoes. The trap is Xintiandi and Tianzifang: both are quiet before 11:00 and crowded after, so do the early one first.
Shanghai breakfast has a classic set the locals call the "four warriors": glutinous rice rolls (cifan), soy milk, the Chinese cruller youtiao and the sesame pancake dabing. Add to that the shengjianbao, the pan-fried pork bun that is the city's other great dumpling. It started in Suzhou in the early 1900s and has been a common breakfast in Shanghai since the early 1920s.
Look for a shop with a big flat pan in the window. The bun is fried with its folded knot facing down, so the bottom turns crisp while the top steams, and the pork and gelatin melt into soup. Bite carefully, it is hotter than it looks. They come in lots of four.
The French laid out the park in 1909. The Japanese renamed it Daxing Park during the war, and after that it became Fuxing Park. It covers about 10 hectares in the French style, with a lake, fountains, pavilions and flowerbeds, and there is a statue of Marx and Engels.
The reason to go is the early morning. The park fills with locals dancing, playing cards and mahjong, and doing tai chi, alone and in groups. Watch, don't photograph faces without asking, and stay out of the way. It is the best free show in the city.
Ten minutes from the park is Xintiandi, a car-free quarter of rebuilt mid-19th-century shikumen ("stone gate") houses, now bars, cafes, shops and restaurants. The developer Shui On redeveloped it from 1996, and unlike the renovation at Tianzifang, most of the houses were taken down and rebuilt. It is polished, expensive and very photogenic, and it shows you what the lane houses of the French Concession looked like without the laundry.
The preserved site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, now a museum, is also here. If it interests you, check its opening days and whether you need to book before you go.
A kilometer south is Tianzifang, a maze of lanes off Taikang Road that grew from the inside outward as artists and small studios moved into the former factories and shikumen houses. The painter Huang Yongyu gave it its name, taken from an old Chinese painter. It is commercial now, with craft shops, coffee bars and restaurants, but because the houses were renovated instead of rebuilt, you still see washing and bicycles in the alleys.
Wander without a plan, turn into the narrow passages and look up at the mixed old and new. It is touristy and the shops are not cheap, but it is livelier than Xintiandi and more honest.
Take a taxi or the metro west to Wukang Road, the best street in the former French Concession for a walk. It is only 1.17 km long and has 37 protected historic buildings in Mediterranean, French Renaissance, English and Art Deco styles, lined with plane trees. An American educator, John Calvin Ferguson, built it in 1897 at his own expense, and the French called it Route Ferguson until 1943, when it took its present name. The writer Ba Jin lived at No. 113.
Start at the southern end with the Wukang Mansion, the wedge-shaped building on Middle Huaihai Road completed in 1924 as the Normandie Apartments. László Hudec designed it, and it looks like a ship from one direction. The story that it was named after a French battleship is a myth. Then walk north, stopping at a cafe when you need to.
Shanghai has its own style of Western cooking, called Haipai, born when the city was a treaty port. Before 1937 there were over 200 Western restaurants here, especially on Xiafei Road and Fuzhou Road. The Russian-style version, with one main dish and one soup such as borscht with bread and butter, was especially popular because it was cheap.
Finish the day at a restaurant that still cooks it the old way, or with benbang (local Shanghainese) dishes, which are sweeter and darker with soy sauce than the cooking of Sichuan or Beijing. Order a few dishes to share and a pot of tea.
Suzhou is the easy day trip: the train is about half an hour each way and the gardens are the point. Book the Humble Administrator's Garden ahead, take your passport for the train, and leave early. Trains can arrive at Suzhou, Suzhou North or Suzhou South, so check the station name on your ticket. On Friday you miss the weekend crowds.
Suzhou's gardens were built by retired officials and merchants to bring a landscape into the city, and the Classical Gardens of Suzhou are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Humble Administrator's Garden is the largest, about 5 hectares, and many people consider it the finest in southern China. An imperial envoy and poet, Wang Xianchen, created it in 1513 on the site of a burned temple, with advice from his friend, the painter Wen Zhengming.
Go early. Follow the water, not the signs: the pavilions sit over ponds and the path zigzags so each turn gives a new frame. Do not try to see everything. Sit in one pavilion for ten minutes and watch how the garden is arranged around the view, then move on.
The new building of the Suzhou Museum sits next to the garden and was designed by the Suzhou-born architect I. M. Pei. It opened in 2006. It holds more than 18,000 relics, including excavated objects, Ming and Qing paintings and ancient books, and it includes Prince Zhong's Mansion, the best-preserved Taiping Heavenly Kingdom buildings.
Even if you skip the collection, walk through the courtyards. The building is part of the exhibit.
A few minutes from the museum is the Lion Grove Garden, another UNESCO-listed garden, famous for the labyrinthine grotto of Taihu rocks at its center, said to look like lions.
It is also one of the Suzhou sites that still asks you to reserve in advance, so book when you buy the first ticket. If you are short of time, drop it and stay on the canal.
Pingjiang Road runs 1.6 km along a canal in the old town. It was already on a map from 1229, and in 2015 it was named a National Historic and Cultural Street. Fifty-one smaller alleys cross it.
Stop for lunch in one of the tea houses or noodle shops. The Suzhou style of xiaolongbao is larger and sweeter than the Shanghai kind, so try one for the comparison. The main street is busy, so walk a block back to find a quieter place.
Come back to the canal late in the day, when the day-trippers thin out. Walk the stretch along the water and let the pace slow. It costs nothing.
Then head back to the station. Trains from Suzhou to Shanghai run until late in the evening, but check the last departure and keep a margin.
The last day is the easiest, all on metro lines 1, 2 and 8. It is a Saturday in this plan: the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall is closed on Wednesdays, the museum is open, and Nanjing Road is at its busiest. Book the museum ahead if you want the special show.
The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall is a modern building on Renmin Avenue next to People's Square. It has a 7,000 square meter exhibition area on the city's planning and development. After the Bund and the towers, it puts the skyline into perspective.
It is not a famous attraction and it is easy to skip if you are tired.
The museum's People's Square building is the one you have seen on postcards, the round top on a square base. Since 9 July 2026 and until 14 November 2027 it hosts just one exhibition, On Top of the World Tree: Ancient Civilizations of the Americas, and nothing else. The permanent Chinese collection is at the East building you visited on day two.
So go only if the Americas show interests you, or if you want to see the building. If you came for Chinese bronzes, you have already done that. Take your passport: individual visitors enter through the south gate and show an original ID.
Order the Shanghai home-cooking classics that you have not tried yet. Scallion oil noodles are noodles tossed in oil in which spring onions have been fried until crisp, with soy sauce. Red-braised pork belly is stewed for hours in soy and sugar. Lion's head is a large pork meatball in a pot.
The traditional cuisine is mostly found in home cooking and in a few old benbang restaurants, so ask for a restaurant that says benbang on the sign or the menu, rather than a generic tourist place.
The pedestrian section of Nanjing Road runs from People's Square toward the Bund. It is a famous shopping street, packed on a Saturday, and honestly more crowd than charm. Walk it once end to end and then escape to a side street.
At the far end you reach the Peace Hotel and the Bund, the same corner as day one. Metro Line 2 from East Nanjing Road station runs straight to Jing'an Temple, so you don't have to walk back.
Jing'an Temple is a Buddhist temple in the middle of the Nanjing Road shopping district. It was first built in 247 AD in the Wu kingdom, beside Suzhou Creek, and moved to this site in 1216. During the Cultural Revolution it was razed and turned into a plastic factory. It was returned to religious use in 1983 and rebuilt, and the pagoda was completed in 2010. The practice is Tangmi esoteric Buddhism.
It is a working temple, so dress modestly and keep your voice down. The contrast with the luxury malls outside the gate is the point of the visit.
Water towns and Hangzhou, ordered by distance from the center as the crow flies.
A small canal town of about 2 square kilometers inside the city's Minhang district, the easiest water town to reach without leaving the metro. A temple and a pagoda, a distillery and canal boat rides, and the entry to the town is free. It is lightly touristy, so it works as a half day.
Getting there: About 15 km southwest, Metro Line 9 to Qibao station, Exit 2
A water town with 36 stone bridges, the five-arched Fangsheng Bridge and old merchant houses along the canals. The old town is free to enter and the garden and museum tickets are separate; most sights close at 16:30. The station is about 1.3 km from the old town, so walk or take a local bus.
Getting there: About 45 km west, Metro Line 17 from Hongqiao Railway Station to Zhujiajiao, trains about every 10 minutes
A canal town crossed by nine rivers, with a bar street at night. It is not on the metro and the transfers are awkward. Check ticket rules before you go.
Getting there: About 65 km southwest in Zhejiang province, via Jiaxing or Jiashan; allow 2 hours
Nicknamed the Venice of the East for its canals. It is half an hour from the center of Suzhou and about two hours from Shanghai by bus. It is better as an extension of the Suzhou day than as a trip of its own.
Getting there: About 75 km west in Wujiang, Suzhou, Suzhou Metro Line 4; best added to a second Suzhou day
A water town in the triangle between Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai. The East quarter is more lived-in and the West quarter more polished, to the point that some call it a theme park. Tickets run roughly 100-190 CNY depending on the quarter or a combined pass, and are real-name, so bring your passport.
Getting there: About 110 km southwest in Zhejiang; the nearest station is Tongxiang, then a short bus or taxi
The city of the UNESCO-listed West Lake, a causeway built in 1089 by the poet Su Shi with 200,000 workers, and Lingyin Temple, founded in AD 326. It deserves a full day, or a whole trip of its own. Metro Line 1 from Hangzhou East reaches the lake in about 20 minutes. Second-class tickets start around 73 CNY.
Getting there: About 165 km southwest, 50-90 minutes by high-speed train from Hongqiao to Hangzhou East
Shanghai food is sweeter and darker than most of China, with a lot of soy sauce and sugar. These are the dishes to try, and the ones that belong to other cities.
The soup dumpling. Thin skin, pork and a gel of broth that melts when steamed. Dip it in black vinegar with ginger, bite a hole and drink the soup first. It is a kind of dim sum, but a Shanghai one.
Where to try it: The Nanxiang Bun Shop by Yu Garden, open since 1900, or Jia Jia Tang Bao on Huanghe Road, where locals queue. Check a map app for the current address.
The pan-fried pork bun with a crisp base and soup inside, a breakfast classic since the early 1920s. They come in lots of four, and the soup is very hot.
Where to try it: Any small shop with a big flat pan in the window, mostly in the morning.
In Shanghai, morning tea (zaocha) means small steamed and fried snacks with tea in the Jiangnan style, with xiaolongbao as the star. It is milder and sweeter than the Cantonese dim sum of Guangdong, which you will also find here.
Where to try it: The Nanxiang Bun Shop brought its morning tea back in 2024 (check that it still runs); otherwise a teahouse.
Noodles in oil where scallions have been fried until brown and crisp, with soy sauce and sugar. Simple, cheap and the thing Shanghainese miss when they are away.
Where to try it: Any noodle shop with a short menu; the cheaper and plainer, the better.
Hongshao rou, pork belly cooked for a long time in soy sauce and sugar until it is soft and shiny. It is the signature of benbang cooking.
Where to try it: A restaurant that says benbang on the sign; the old dishes mostly survive in home cooking and a few old restaurants.
A large pork meatball with cabbage around it that looks like a lion's mane, cooked in plain or soy-braised form, served in a pot.
Where to try it: Benbang and Jiangnan restaurants.
A seasonal freshwater crab, steamed with ginger and eaten with vinegar, sugar and ginger. The season is set by the lunar calendar: females are best from the ninth lunar month (about October), males from the tenth (about November), and it ends around December. Yangcheng Lake is the best-known source.
Where to try it: Crab specialists in Pudong or the old city. Ask the price per crab before ordering.
Western food that Shanghai adapted for itself: Russian-style borscht, bread and butter, set meals. A leftover of the treaty port years, served in a few old restaurants.
Where to try it: Old Haipai restaurants in the former French Concession; ask your hotel.
Teahouses range from tourist traps to proper rooms, and Suzhou and Hangzhou are the places for tea. Coffee shops are everywhere in the French Concession and Jing'an.
Where to try it: A teahouse on Pingjiang Road in Suzhou; a coffee shop on Wukang Road.
Baijiu is China's national spirit, a strong clear grain spirit drunk in small glasses with food and toasts. Shanghai cooks also use spirits to make 'drunken' crab and chicken.
Where to try it: Restaurants; order a glass before you buy a bottle.
Light lager is the default with food, served cold at the table. Craft beer bars have opened around the French Concession.
Where to try it: Any restaurant or convenience store.
Shanghai is big, so choose by the metro and the mood, not by the star rating.
Best for: First-timers who want the sights on foot and three metro lines
You are close to the Bund, Nanjing Road and three metro lines (1, 2 and 8). The catch is that it is the most touristy part of the city, with the highest hotel prices and the most noise.
Best for: Slow travelers who like cafes, tree-lined streets and small restaurants
The best area for walking, eating and drinking. Metro stations are close but not everywhere, so you will use taxis for some trips. Choose a hotel near Line 1, 7 or 10 to stay connected.
Best for: Shoppers and anyone who wants metro lines 2 and 7 and the airport route
Modern, comfortable and well connected, with shopping malls and Jing'an Temple. It has less local flavor than the French Concession and some quiet streets are hard to find.
Best for: Business travelers, and anyone who wants a skyline room
The views from the hotels are outstanding. The catch is that Lujiazui is empty in the evening, with few restaurants beyond the malls, and the old city is a metro ride away.
Pinpoint: click each country on the world map - inside the border for full points, the closer the more you earn.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Shanghai easier.
China has a unilateral 30-day visa-free policy for ordinary passport holders from 50 countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina and most of Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and others). The list is on the National Immigration Administration site and the Shanghai government page, updated on 26 August 2026. The stay is up to 30 days, counted from midnight after you arrive, for tourism, business, visiting family and transit. For most of these countries the exemption runs to 31 December 2026, so check the list if you travel later. The United States is not on the list.
Travelers from 57 countries, the United States among them, can use the 240-hour (10-day) visa-free transit policy, which is for people passing through China to a third country or region, not back to where they started: you need valid travel documents and an onward ticket with a confirmed seat and date, and you enter through one of 65 open ports. Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are among the permitted areas, so the Suzhou and Hangzhou trips are fine. Check the official transit page and ask your airline about your routing. Work, study and journalism always need a visa. UK government advice asks for a passport valid for six months after arrival with two blank pages.
China runs on Alipay and WeChat Pay. Both let foreign visitors link Visa and Mastercard cards, with limits of 5,000 USD per payment and 50,000 USD a year under the 2024 government guidance. Set them up before you fly, as verification can take time. Cards are accepted in hotels of three stars and above and in the big attractions, UnionPay works everywhere, and ATMs with your card network's logo give out yuan. Carry some cash anyway: small shops and older people still use it, and counterfeit 100 yuan notes exist, so check any note you receive.
Google services, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X and WhatsApp are blocked on mainland networks, and most Western news and some other sites too. A local SIM or eSIM is filtered like any Chinese network. A roaming eSIM, or your home carrier's roaming, routes your traffic through a foreign network, so blocked apps often work, but it depends on the provider, so ask before you buy. A VPN is the other route, but the UK government notes that VPN services must be licensed by the Chinese government. Download offline maps and a translator before you land, and take screenshots of hotel addresses in Chinese.
Google Maps works only partly and its blue dot can sit tens or hundreds of meters off because China uses a shifted coordinate system. Amap (Gaode) has an English mode and lines up with the streets. For the airport, the Maglev runs from Pudong International Airport to Longyang Road in about 8 minutes and accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express and JCB cards at the gates, after you switch on small-amount password-free payment (a pilot since June 2025). The fare is about 50 CNY one way, around 40 with a same-day air ticket, and trains run from about 6:45 to about 21:40; check the last train against a late flight. From Longyang Road, change to Metro Line 2 or 7. Line 2 also runs to the airport and is slower. On the metro, foreigners can pay with a card at the service center, the Shanghai Metro Daduhui app, or Alipay and WeChat Pay.
Foreign visitors buy high-speed train tickets with a passport, on the 12306 app or website or at the station window. Tickets go on sale about 15 days ahead, and popular times sell out around holidays. Trip.com is a simpler English booking site with a small fee. Take your passport to the station and to the gate, because it is your ticket ID. Shanghai Hongqiao is the station for Suzhou and Hangzhou, next to the Hongqiao airport. Avoid the first week of October and Chinese New Year (6 February 2027), when everyone is traveling.
Foreigners must register their address with the local police within 24 hours of arrival. A hotel does this for you when you check in with your passport. If you stay in a private apartment, you must register at the local police station. Police do random ID checks, so carry your passport (a printed copy is not accepted) and be careful photographing sensitive or military areas.
Use the metro or a taxi app, or take a marked taxi with a meter and ask for a receipt. Avoid unmarked cars. The classic scam in tourist areas is the 'tea tasting', 'art student' or 'massage' invitation from a friendly stranger, followed by a huge bill. Say no, keep walking, and do not leave drinks unattended.
Few people outside hotels speak much English, so save addresses in Chinese. The whole country uses one time zone, UTC+8, with no clock change. The currency is the yuan (CNY); on 23 October 2026 1 EUR was about 7.5 CNY.
Yes. Five days covers the old city, the Bund, Pudong, the French Concession, People's Square and Jing'an, and still leaves a full day for Suzhou. With three days, do days one, two and three and skip the day trip and People's Square.
Not if you hold an ordinary passport from one of 50 countries on China's unilateral visa-free list, which includes the UK, Canada, Australia and most of Europe: you can stay up to 30 days, for now to 31 December 2026 for most. US citizens are not on that list but can use the 240-hour visa-free transit policy if they continue to a third country or region with a confirmed onward ticket. Check the official National Immigration Administration pages before you book.
Partly. Big hotels and top attractions take Visa and Mastercard, but most daily payments are by Alipay or WeChat Pay. Link your card to one of them before you fly, and carry some yuan for small shops.
Not on a normal local connection. Google services, Instagram and WhatsApp are blocked, as are Facebook, YouTube and X. A roaming eSIM from a foreign carrier sometimes gets around it, depending on the plan, and a VPN is subject to Chinese licensing rules. Install what you need before you go.
Most visitors have no trouble, and the center is busy late into the evening. Watch for the tea-tasting scam, avoid unmarked taxis, carry your passport and follow local laws, which are stricter than in many countries, especially on political speech and drugs.
It is among the most expensive cities in mainland China, but cheaper than most Western capitals. Metro rides and street food cost a few yuan, many sights cost 40-180 CNY, and hotels and restaurants in the center cost the most.
Suzhou, which is day four: about half an hour by high-speed train, with UNESCO gardens and a canal street. For something quieter, Zhujiajiao is on a metro line, and Hangzhou with West Lake needs a full day.
Hotel staff and younger people in the center often do, but most others do not. Metro signs are bilingual. Keep addresses in Chinese on your phone and use a translation app.
Find Shanghai on the map, learn the flag and check how much you really know about China.
The first capital of China, with a wall you can ride and a noodle as wide as a belt. Five days, planned properly.
A harbor city with a car-free colonial island, earthen castles in the hills and a medieval port nearby. Five days, booking rules included.
A UNESCO old town that is mostly shops, and a 5,596-meter mountain that is not. Five days at 2,400 meters, planned honestly.
China