Shanghai (上海; Zånhae in Shanghainese, Shànghǎi in Mandarin) is the most developed city in China, the country's main center for finance and fashion, and one of the world's most populous and important cities. Shanghai is a fascinating mix of East and West. It has historic shikumen (石库门) houses that blend the styles of Chinese houses with European design flair, and it has one of the richest collections of Art Deco buildings in the world.
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Shanghai Municipality has 16 administrative districts, each with at least a few hundred thousand people, and Wikivoyage has separate articles for most of them. Here we try to split them up in a way that will make sense for travellers. The historic core of Shanghai, it includes both the old Chinese city and the area of the International Settlement which began in the 1840s and lasted until the 1930s. It can be called Puxi (浦西), downtown Shanghai (上海市区) or the city center (市中心). Today this area is still the core of the city.
Shanghai is one of four cities in China that are administered as municipalities (市), meaning that it is not part of any province, and its government instead reports directly to the central government in Beijing. There are several ways to rate the size of cities; based on UN numbers, Shanghai is the fifth-largest city in the world after Jakarta, Dhaka, Tokyo and Delhi. By any measure, it is in the top ten for the world and either the largest in China or second to Chongqing. The municipality covers quite a large area — 6341 km2 or 2,448 square miles — and has a population over 25 million, about the same as Australia.
Shanghai has an excellent public transport network with the one of the world's most extensive metro (subway and elevated train) systems as its backbone and buses that go more-or-less everywhere else. Taxis are plentiful, and cheap by international standards, and getting around on foot is often practical. Metro, taxi and walking will be the main means of transport for most travellers. The city is huge (24 million), though, and all transport methods sometimes have problems with congestion. International credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, JCB) including mobile payment apps can now be used to "tap to pay" on all Shanghai metro lines.
Individual listings can be found in Shanghai's district articles Where to go in Shanghai depends largely on available time and your interests. For the areas with most of the main tourist attractions, see the Downtown and Pudong sections above and the district articles they link to. If you read Chinese well, the Meituan app, Amap, or Baidu search engine may also be helpful. Many of Shanghai's main tourist sights are in Huangpu District: The Old City (老城厢; Lao Chengxiang, also known as 南市, Nanshi) is the original Chinese city going back about 1000 years, now a major tourist area.
Individual listings can be found in Shanghai's district articles The municipal government runs the Shanghai Cultural Information website which has good listings of current events (special exhibits at museums and galleries; shows such as acrobatics at the circus, touring musicians, and plays; sporting events). If you like shopping or window shopping, a walk along either of Shanghai's major commercial streets takes an hour or two (or up to several days if you visit many stores and explore side streets) and can be quite interesting: Nanjing Road, starting from the Bund (Nanjing Road East metro station, line 2 or 10 ) and heading west toward People's Park, Jing'an Temple and perhaps beyon…
Individual listings can be found in Shanghai's district articles Many food options in Shanghai are much as anywhere else in China. A lot of the street food is cheap and interesting; roasted sweet potatoes are a common and low-risk item. Hole-in-the-wall restaurants, especially West-of-China Muslim noodle places or spicy Sichuan places, often have good cheap food as well.
Individual listings can be found in Shanghai's district articles Most of the places mentioned under #Eat above also serve booze, and the rest have coffee and tea. The traditional alcoholic drink of choice for the Shanghainese is Shaoxing rice wine, and this can still be found in most restaurants. Prices of drinks in cafés and bars vary like they would in any major metropolis. They can be cheap or budget-busters, with a basic coffee or beer costing ¥10-40. In a high-end hotel bar, one basic beer may cost as much as ¥80. Western-style cafés and bars have also become commonplace.
Shanghai, despite its size, is a very safe city, and violent crime is incredibly rare; it is generally not a problem for women to roam the streets alone at night. Petty crimes like pick-pocketing and bike theft can sometimes occur, though they are not as common as they used to be with the ubiquity of CCTVs these days. Sexual harassment occasionally occurs on crowded public transport.
Guide content from Wikivoyage contributors (CC BY-SA) — abridged; the full article has much more.
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