September 2026

If you are moving to Shanghai with a family, you will quickly discover a pattern. Parents talk. They compare compounds. They ask about schools, green space, and whether you can actually get a proper grocery delivery without waiting two hours. And sooner or later, someone will say: Have you looked at Gubei? Gubei and the broader Hongqiao area are not the flashiest parts of Shanghai. They do not...

Shanghai's nightlife is a living organism. It breathes, it shifts, and it evolves faster than almost any other city I know. A bar that's packed on a Saturday night can be a ghost town on a Tuesday. A club that opens to massive hype can quietly close its doors six months later, replaced by something new and entirely different. That's part of what makes this city so exciting — and so frustrating. By...

The first time you land in Shanghai, you will do what everyone does. You open Google Maps. You watch the little blue dot drift across the screen, park itself in the middle of a building across the street, and politely refuse to tell you where you actually are. The GPS is about 150 meters off, and no amount of restarting your phone will fix it. Welcome to Shanghai. Google Maps does not work here....

One of the first questions you will face when looking for an apartment in Shanghai is: furnished or unfurnished? The short answer is that almost every rental listing in Shanghai comes furnished. But "furnished" can mean anything from a bed, wardrobe, and sofa to a fully equipped home with everything you need on day one. Understanding what you are actually getting — and how to negotiate — can...

Somewhere in your first conversation with us, we'll probably ask about your visa status — and it's not idle curiosity. It genuinely shapes what we can show you, how fast a lease can move, and what a landlord will expect to see before signing. Here's the plain-English version of a genuinely complicated system, focused specifically on what matters for renting a home rather than the full legal...