Shanghai
Shanghai is a provincial-level direct-administered municipality in China.
It has a population of 30,050,000 in the urban area as of 2026, thus making it China's most populous city and more broadly the fifth-largest city in the world by population. The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River bisecting the city.
Getting to Shanghai
Shanghai is one of China's main travel hubs and arriving from pretty much anywhere is easy. Visitors from 54 countries who are transiting through Shanghai are permitted to visit without a visa for up to 240 hours. People visiting under this scheme can travel freely between Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but may not travel beyond the three provincial-level units.
Worth seeing
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.
Things to do
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).
Where to eat
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.
Getting around Shanghai the local way
- Get inThere are ferry services from Kobe and Osaka (Japan) weekly.
- Get aroundChina T-union covers all bus, metro and ferry lines in Shanghai, as well as taxis.
- Get aroundA useful ferry runs between the Bund (from a ferry pier a few blocks south of Nanjing Road next to the KFC restaurant) and Lujiazui financial district in Pudong (the terminal is about 10 minutes south of the Pearl TV Tower and Lujiazui metro station) and is the cheapest way of crossing the river at ¥2 per person.
- Get aroundHowever, some of the ferry stations are not directly connected to public transport so you need to walk a bit.
- Get aroundBicycles and mopeds are not allowed on many major roads (signs designate this), or in the tunnels and on the bridges between Pudong and Puxi (the only way to cross is by ferry).
- Get aroundThere are a few sidecar owners clubs in Shanghai (Black Bats, People's Riders Club), shops (Yiqi, Cao, Fan, Jack, Jonson, Leo) and a tour operator (Shanghai Sideways) which are worth checking out.
From Wikivoyage: Shanghai, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons (see file page), Wikimedia Commons.