Shanghai travel guide

Let us start with a confession. When the Oriental Pearl Tower was first proposed, many people thought it would never work. The design was too strange. The location was too remote. The construction was too difficult. Thirty years later, it is impossible to imagine Shanghai without it. Here is everything you need to know about the tower that changed Pudong forever – from its unlikely birth to what...

There is a corner of Shanghai where grey brick Shikumen walls meet glass shopfronts. Where an alley that once led to a family kitchen now leads to an Italian restaurant. Where the past was not torn down. It was redesigned. Xintiandi is not the oldest part of Shanghai. It is not the quietest or the cheapest. But no other neighborhood tells the story of the city‘s transformation quite like this...

Some places feel like they belong on a movie set. Yuyuan Garden is one of them. Tucked away in the middle of Shanghai‘s busiest tourist district, this 400-year-old garden is a time machine. One minute you‘re pushing through crowds near the City God Temple, surrounded by neon signs and souvenir shops. The next minute, you step through an ancient gate and suddenly the noise fades. You‘re standing...