Like all the best travel experiences, nothing can truly prepare you for Shanghai’s stunning blend of old-world beauty and hyper-modernity, but visiting like a local in the world’s third-largest city can be difficult. Exploring the city first-hand, Travel Tomorrow travelled to Shanghai and learned from influencers and locals about their own favourite places in the city.
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower
I always recommend getting to a high place as soon as possible when visiting a new city, to better appreciate the destination’s layout and landmarks. In Shanghai, the place to do this is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, beloved too by locals, who go there for special occasions.
Built between 1991 and 1994, at 468 metres tall including its antenna, it was China’s tallest building for 13 years, before being taken over by the nearby Shanghai World Financial Center, and, since then, Shanghai Tower. It now sits amid a forest of supertall structures in the Pudong district, facing the Huangpu River, but is instantly recognisable. Its distinctive design is an homage to one of China’s greatest poems, Pipa xing, involving eleven spheres or “pearls, big and small” that appear to be falling onto the platter of jade that is the shining river.
@babygirlmaadz China is such an underrated country. I’ll def be back for you 🇨🇳🫶🏻 #thebundshanghai #orientalpearltower #shanghai #china ♬ nhạc nền – 王风 music – W/N⁷
The tower has no fewer than 15 observation levels, some of which have glass floors, and the views from all are extraordinary, by day and, particularly for me at least, at night, when futuristic light installations and advertisements play all around on the surrounding buildings. And if the view is not entertaining enough, amusements in the tower include an indoor roller coaster and museums, and there is a revolving restaurant serving a spectacular buffet for around €50 per person. For those who cannot tear themselves away, there’s even a hotel.
Strolling along The Bund
The vista from this promenade along the Huangpu River is arguably better than from the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, especially for those afraid of heights. A 1.5-kilometre-long walkway, The Bund offers waterfront views of one of the world’s most iconic skylines (including the “falling pearls” described above), across – and reflected in – the HuangPu River.
Turn, and behind you on the west bank lies a collection of 52 colonial-era buildings, at night bathed in golden light. Alongside the neoclassical dome of the former HSBC and Municipal Government Building, the British-built New Custom House is one of the jewels here, built in 1927 with a Big Ben-inspired clock tower and once itself the tallest building on The Bund. Nearby sit the magnificent Art Deco Peace Hotel, originally funded by the ancestors of war poet Siegfried Sassoon, and the Renaissance Beaux-Arts stylings of the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Building.
Standing here between old and new on The Bund, a European influencer who lives in China, Lucas Deckers explains, the visitor cannot fail to appreciate the important place Shanghai holds in the history of world trade. Like him, I was moved by the beauty and the buzz, and highly conscious of being caught between the symbols of trading concessions held by former colonial powers and the giants of Shanghai’s modern financial district, across the water.
People-watching at the “marriage market” in the park
For a less architectural and more familial insight into the city, Arina Yakupova, a Shanghai-based TV host and journalist, told Travel Tomorrow about the People’s Park marriage market. Taking place at weekends from 5 pm, this quirky event sees exasperated parents meeting up at this former horse racecourse south of Nanjing Road for what these days is a very different type of horse race, as hopefuls attempt to find a partner for their unmarried offspring.
It’s a spectacle for the curious to behold as parents hold up umbrellas advertising details such as their son or daughter’s age, education, height, occupation, pastimes, and even salary, and approach each other to discuss potential “love” matches.
The site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
From the personal to the political, Shanghai has something for everyone. As a former politics student, I was fascinated to set foot inside the site of the CCP’s First National Congress. In a pedestrianised part of the city’s former French Concession – a must-see in itself, characterised by typically Shanghainese shikumen or “lane houses” – this museum is dedicated to the history of the rise of Chinese communism. It combines a series of swish modern galleries filled with artefacts and information, waxworks and 3D film, that provide a crash course in the history of colonialism in China and the growing discontent that led to the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.
Yu Garden
An alternative to the People’s Park is the Yuyuan Garden, in the northeast of the Old City, not far from the Bund, recommended by Tobias Le Comte, a Belgian musician and influencer who has made his life in Shanghai. Originally created in the 16th century by a Ming Dynasty governor as a comfort for his father, the garden’s name refers to peace and comfort.
Typical of the region’s Jiangnan garden style, it boasts six main areas, all with different themes such as harvest and long life, spring and sunlight, or wealth. It’s exquisite, entered via a “nine-turn bridge” that gives visitors the chance to see the garden’s beauty from different angles. Next to the bridge is one of the oldest tea shops in China, with tables where the great anarchist writer Ba Jin and Queen Elizabeth II once sat – though not together. Open 8:30 am to 10:00 pm daily.
Shopping and eating
Also close to the Yuyuan Garden is the Yuyuan Tourist Mart, recreating the Jiangnan garden feel in a marketplace that has evolved from peddler origins to become a Shanghai staple, selling uniquely Chinese souvenirs and crafts in silk, bamboo, and shell, and proposing food outlets for vegetarian buns, chicken soup, and Xiao Long Bao (Soup Dumplings).
If dumplings are your bag, Tobias recommended trying Jia Jia Tang Bao, an affordable and venerable establishment whose flagship location is on the Huanghe Road, just a short walk from the People’s Park.
