Best time
Late March to May and September to early November; the summer is hot and humid with plum rain in June, and January can be damp and cold.
At a glance
- Eat
- Xiǎolóngbāo, €36 Rate 2026-08-26. A steamer shop with a queue and a short menu, not a mall restaurant with a tasting flight of coloured dumplings.
- Book ahead
- Nothing here needs booking far ahead except a hotel over a national holiday; check whether your train leaves from Hongqiao or Shanghai station.
- Skip
- The Bund sightseeing tunnel and the tourist-boat night cruises sold on the promenade. The free walk along the water gives you the same skyline.
Shanghai is the least demanding Chinese city to arrive in and the easiest to leave. Two airports and two main railway stations connect almost everywhere worth going, the metro is signed in English throughout, and the payment and translation apps you set up before flying will have their gentlest test here. That is the practical argument for putting it last: whatever went wrong earlier in the trip is fixable in Shanghai.
The pleasure is at street level rather than in ticketed sights. The former French Concession is plane trees, low brick lanes and coffee; the Bund is a row of colonial banking halls looking across at Pudong; and the two are a walk apart. Give one evening to the waterfront and the rest to neighbourhoods, and treat the observation decks as optional — the view of the towers is generally better than the view from them.
Sources
- China travel planning, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, accessed
- China Railway 12306 booking and ticket rules, China State Railway Group, accessed