Shanghai

Shanghai (上海, Shànghǎi) is one of China's four direct-administered municipalities and the country's largest city by urban population, situated on the Huangpu River where it meets the Yangtze near the East China Sea. The municipality is divided by the Huangpu into Puxi, the historic core on the west bank, and Pudong, the modern financial district on the east bank, with several suburban districts extending into the Yangtze Delta. Shanghai is China's leading financial center and busiest container port, and is widely regarded as the most cosmopolitan of Chinese cities.

Shanghai was a small fishing and cotton town until the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing ended the First Opium War and opened it to foreign trade. Britain, France, and the United States each established concessions along the Huangpu, and by the 1920s Shanghai had grown into one of Asia's most modern and notorious cities, a "paradise of adventurers" of banks, jazz clubs, and opium dens. After the Communist takeover in 1949 the foreign community departed and Shanghai became a center of state industry rather than glamour. Economic reforms from 1990 onward rekindled the city's growth, and the farmland of Pudong was transformed into a forest of skyscrapers within a single generation.

Today Shanghai offers visitors a dense mix of colonial-era riverfront, traditional lane-house neighborhoods, world-class museums, and futuristic skyline views. The Bund preserves the row of early-20th-century banks and hotels that once housed the foreign concessions, while across the river the towers of Lujiazui form one of the world's great skylines. Inland, the tree-lined streets of the former French Concession, the restored shikumen alleyways of Xintiandi, and the Ming-era Yu Garden give a sense of the city's layered past, and a string of museums along People's Square and the West Bund round out the cultural offerings.

Highlights

The Bund

The Bund (外滩, Wàitān) is Shanghai's most famous waterfront, a one-mile promenade along the west bank of the Huangpu River lined with early-20th-century banks, hotels, and trading houses built in Neoclassical, Art Deco, and Baroque styles.

By day it offers views across the river to the futuristic towers of Lujiazui; by night the floodlit facades and the neon skyline opposite make it one of China's great urban spectacles.

Yu Garden & Chenghuang Miao

Yu Garden (豫园, Yùyuán) is a classical Ming Dynasty garden in the old Chinese city, built in the 16th century around rockeries, pavilions, and ponds. Next to it, Chenghuang Miao (City God Temple) is a lively bazaar of snack stalls, teahouses, and souvenir shops.

Together they form Shanghai's most visited traditional quarter, where the ornate garden architecture contrasts with the bustle of the surrounding market streets.