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Does anyone have any tips. We have Yu Garden in our itinerary. Also as suggested on here going up to the 91st floor for a drink on Park Hyatt to get good views of the Bund?! Captain Bar for cheap drinks and the Bund views? French concession worth it?!
Any ‘local’ restaurants for authentic food? I have one pinned (Jia Jia Tang Bao) for example.
Whilst wife and child doing Disney is there something me and BIL can do thats adventurous, a bit ‘out there’?
We wanted the watertown experience but not in commercial fake sense so our travels has us heading down to Shaoxing for the Anchang Ancient Town which from reviews seems to be slightly free of tourists.
Any other info would be gladly appreciated.
@zapato1060 – when you mention Yu garden, I trust you mean the actual Yu Yuan garden as opposed to the adjacent shopping area of the same name.
The upper floors of the Hyatt – either the lobby bar or the restaurant on a different level do offer spectacular wide views, but in some ways it’s too high and set back to see the Bund that well – you also don’t see Pudong so well. On the lobby level there is a Cantonese restaurant with a very good value quite extraordinary set lunch but the view is in the opposite direction.
To see the Bund, you will get a better view from the bar of the Peninsula on 14F, particularly if sitting at the small bar counter. Although the hotel is on the Bund, the angle means you can see right down the Bund, the river and all of Pudong including the Pearl Tower. Cocktails are about 110RMB. You can in fact also get almost as good a view from the People’s Monument more or less opposite the hotel.
You will discover that there are no bridges across the Huangpu in the centre of town. The small number of ferry crossings at Dongchang Road and Taigong (just by the Kempinski) are a great viewing point/nice albeit brief boat ride for 2RMB. There is a new riverside walk all the way between the two ferries on the Pudong side and from the Taigong line there is a new riverside walkway all the way to the main Bund walkway, but that is usually heaving, so better along the other side of the river.
If you haven’t been before, going up the Pearl Tower is fun. For other things, it depends what you like! The French Concession and Hongkou are the only historic areas really left – lots to see but a guide will really help enjoy it. We really liked the Residence of Zhou Enlai, a very central person in Chinese history. We get clothes made at the South Bund Soft Spinning market. There is in reality much less to see in Shanghai than say Beijing or Nanjing.
In terms of restaurants, your definition of local may not be right vs what might be considered ‘local’ vs tourist restaurants that you might find in Italy or France. Foreign tourists are massively outnumbered by local tourists and inhabitants so the restaurants are almost entirely populated by Chinese people. Shanghai is expensive and good and bad restaurants are expensive. There are some restaurants they call ‘hole in the wall’ but difficult unless with a mandarin speaker. Queues are a good sign and don’t usually entail a long wait as people are served/eat quickly and people leave more or less as soon as they finish eating.
These are ones we visited last autumn and where local people eat!
Yong Fu Mini (Ningbo cuisine) in IFC (see roof terrace)
Canton 8 (Runan Street branch)
Shi He Yuan – in IFC
Shanghai Rose/Mei Gui Ting Shanghai (in the French Concession)
Hong 0871 (Yunnanese, in Hongkou) ✔️✔️
Lan Xin (on Jinxian Road – best value, expect to queue)
Di Shui Dong – lots of expats but also many Chinese.Avoid restaurants in the Xintiandi area! Also avoid Lost Heaven (both locations) – used to be great, now shite.
@zapato1060 – when you mention Yu garden, I trust you mean the actual Yu Yuan garden as opposed to the adjacent shopping area of the same name.
The upper floors of the Hyatt – either the lobby bar or the restaurant on a different level do offer spectacular wide views, but in some ways it’s too high and set back to see the Bund that well – you also don’t see Pudong so well. On the lobby level there is a Cantonese restaurant with a very good value quite extraordinary set lunch but the view is in the opposite direction.
To see the Bund, you will get a better view from the bar of the Peninsula on 14F, particularly if sitting at the small bar counter. Although the hotel is on the Bund, the angle means you can see right down the Bund, the river and all of Pudong including the Pearl Tower. Cocktails are about 110RMB. You can in fact also get almost as good a view from the People’s Monument more or less opposite the hotel.
You will discover that there are no bridges across the Huangpu in the centre of them. The small number of ferry crossings at Dongchang Road and Taigong (just by the Kempinski) are a great viewing point/nice albeit brief boat ride for 2RMB. There is a new riverside walk all the way between the two ferries on the Pudong side and from the Taigong line there is a new riverside walkway all the way to the main Bund walkway, but that is usually heaving, so better along the other side of the river.
If you haven’t been before, going up the Pearl Tower is fun. For other things, it depends what you like! The French Concession and Hongkou are the only historic areas really left – lots to see but a guide will really help enjoy it. We really liked the Residence of Zhou Enlai, a very central person in Chinese history. We get clothes made at the South Bund Soft Spinning market. There is in reality much less to see in Shanghai than say Beijing or Nanjing.
In terms of restaurants, your definition of local may not be right vs what might be considered ‘local’ vs tourist restaurants that you might find in Italy or France. Foreign tourists are massively outnumbered by local tourists and inhabitants so the restaurants are almost entirely populated by Chinese people. Shanghai is expensive and good and bad restaurants are expensive. There are some restaurants they call ‘hole in the wall’ but difficult unless with a mandarin speaker. Queues are a good sign and don’t usually entail a long wait as people are served/eat quickly and people leave more or less as soon as they finish eating.
These are ones we visited last autumn and where local people eat!
Yong Fu Mini (Ningbo cuisine) in IFC (see roof terrace)
Canton 8 (Runan Street branch)
Shi He Yuan – in IFC
Shanghai Rose/Mei Gui Ting Shanghai (in the French Concession)
Hong 0871 (Yunnanese, in Hongkou) ✔️✔️
Lan Xin (on Jinxian Road – best value, expect to queue)
Di Shui Dong – lots of expats but also many Chinese.Avoid restaurants in the Xintiandi area! Also avoid Lost Heaven (both locations) – used to be great, now shite.
Did @JDB just use the s- word like us mortals 🙂
We spent a few days there with our son just before COVID – he was vegetarian at the time which made restaurants challenging! We did find a pretty good cafe type thing in the fake market under AP Plaza. The fake market is worth going in its own right if you want to see the vast amount of fake stuff you can buy!
Streetfood around Yuyuan gardens is interesting/entertaining. We did find a really nice restaurant there but cant for life of me remember, and cant use google streetview to find it!
I’d avoid the bigger food courts especially if they look like a giant buffet with a central paying area, as they were a bit crap and nothing like the Hawker markets in Singapore.
We managed to get a table booked at Captains Bar right on the edge of the roof top so had decent views of the skyline.
Jade Buddha Temple was interesting. There is a sort of “peace & quiet” area where you arent allowed phones and can get some calligraphy pens & scrolls and just spend a bit of time tracing some Chinese characters & stuff.
its well worth getting up early one morning and watching the local pensioners doing their exercises to music, maybe head through the shopping streets toward the Bund around 7am and you’ll see them.
+1 for the fake market AP Plaza. You can get some amazing stuff if you ask… they keep the best stuff very hidden. Maglev to the airport was great too, if only to marvel at what a short line it is for their $1bn investment 😉
China Art Museum was free and super impressive architecturally, but took us all of 45 mins to explore and had a rubbish shop (no postcards of the art! Boo!)
@dmm27 mention of the Jade Buddha Temple is a good call which I had forgotten. Not the Jing An Temple which is impressive to look at but built yesterday.
Re the AP Plaza, it was decimated by Covid as it relied almost exclusively on tourists and aircrew. It may have improved by now, but as at last October, the stands in the main (circular) section were probably at least 75% unoccupied and all the food outlets closed. The jewellery section was marginally more alive. The square section directly off the metro station is more occupied but still sells total rubbish. The South Bund Soft Spinning Market is fully occupied but now more dedicated to tailoring and fewer fake stands.
It’s a Chinese word. After all I am sure he speaks Chinese as well 🙂
Thank you all so much for your contributions.
@JDB I actually had Lan Xin in my list and looking forward to it.I have linked my Alipay with Chase card so hoping that works ok (fingers crossed). Are there any fee free ATMs? to take out yuans? Or Alipay sufficient?
It’s a Chinese word. After all I am sure he speaks Chinese as well 🙂
Supposedly in Chinese its ( Lā shǐ ) so I could not think of a word more closely related 😀 😀
@zapato1060 – I’m not sure which if any ATMs are fee free but you won’t need a lot of cash these days. Since Covid, cash is used much less even for taxis. You ideally want coins for the little ferries and in the markets, you will get a better price for cash. Alipay and WeChat pay work almost everywhere. If it doesn’t work when you scan their QR code, try it the other way whereby they scan your QR code.
Going back to your ‘local’ restaurant question, the one I mentioned, Canton 8 in Runan St is in a very residential area so you get to see a lot of real local life and real shops vs other parts of Shanghai so walking to/from was interesting in itself.
@zapato1060 we came back from a 5 night trip to Shanghai two weeks ago and don’t have any specific suggestions but can only share our experience.
I bought £50 RMB from a friend who’d recently returned from a similar trip who was insistent that I wouldn’t need it as Alipay is everything. We did actually manage to spend it, most in the fake market at Science & Technology Stn on line 2 on some ‘silk’ bedding and some when a taxi driver couldn’t read my Alipay QR and I couldn’t read theirs (may be a scam but didn’t cost more and I was happy to offload the cash!)
We had few expectations, Mrs Metty did ask several times why we were going at all as it seemed like going for a holiday in Canary Wharf China-style (to use Virgin vouchers most cost effectively) and as is often the case, it turned out to way exceed our expectations and we had a great time.
You may have been to China recently but I haven’t been for 7 years and the change was incredible. I assumed that it was maybe just Shanghai as a showpiece but we’d booked a day out by 280kph train to Suzhou (Tongli and gardens in Suzhou) and found same there, autonomous buses, no petrol/diesel powered transport that I recall so all very quiet, transport fabulous and well organised – like Japan seemed years ago to us – things like Suzhou railway station is the size of Terminal 5 with seats for everyone to sit down. Shanghai station older but still enough seating. Everything working off Alipay, passport used as train tickets, Shanghai metro so easy to understand.
We’re really more interested in fluffy things like people watching than food; at the weekend the cosplayers were out in force and in the gardens the girls doing selfies in their (I assume) rented dresses with make-up done were a good watch. Also surprised to a guy dressed in a French maid outfit in central Shanghai; although I don’t read the Daily Mail I assumed China may not be too liberal.
I was using a 2018 Lonely Planet for walks around the various districts; amusingly the ‘Old town’ walk was difficult as what was the Old Town has been bulldozed awaiting redevelopment. And the LP wasn’t too helpful with the fake market, so we got off the metro at Science & Technology Stn, went above ground and wandered around for an hour looking for it before an entertaining exchange with a car park attendant using Google Translate and sign language helped us understand it was actually in the Metro station. Lots of aircrew there, which explains the ‘airline discount’ signs and an inordinate number of model aircraft stalls. btw Uniqlo prices 20%-30% cheaper than UK, not a huge saving, not sure if useful as a general yardstick.
Loved it, hardly saw any westerners at all outside the market, nobody gave us a second glance but people were very keen to engage if need be. Bizzarely, of the millions of residents, two of the people we approached had been to Uni in the UK. Despite using the metro, we walked 20k steps every day. Gave up with WeChat as WhatsApp and Google worked ok for us. Hope that you have a good time too!
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