Top 10 Things to Do in Shanghai

The classical Ming Dynasty garden in the heart of the Old City is a masterwork of pavilions, rockeries, koi ponds, and covered walkways — surrounded by a covered bazaar where the queue for the legendary soup dumplings at Nanxiang Steamed Bun starts before 8am.

The leafy former French district of plane-tree-shaded streets, art-deco villas, independent boutiques, and sidewalk cafés is Shanghai at its most charming — a neighbourhood where the past and present co-inhabit with unusual elegance.

The impossible cluster of towers on the Pudong east bank — the Pearl Tower, the bottle-opener Shanghai World Financial Center, and the twisting Shanghai Tower (China's tallest building) — is one of the defining skylines of the 21st century.

Stretching six kilometres from the Bund to Jing'an, the world's busiest shopping street pulses with department stores, flagship boutiques, and street-food carts selling roasted chestnuts and sugar-coated strawberries to millions of shoppers daily.

The pleated Shanghai soup dumpling — 18 folds precisely, a delicate skin holding scalding pork broth and minced meat — is the city's greatest gift to gastronomy and best experienced at Din Tai Fung where the craft is performed openly behind glass.

The distinctive bronze-cauldron-shaped museum on People's Square holds one of China's finest collections of ancient bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy, and furniture — 12 permanent galleries covering 6,000 years of Chinese art at no entry charge.

The converted cotton-mill complex on Moganshan Road is Shanghai's premier contemporary art cluster — 100+ galleries, studios, and creative spaces in industrial buildings festooned with street art, where emerging Chinese artists show work alongside international names.

Restored shikumen stone-gate townhouses from the 1920s now house upscale restaurants, bars, boutiques, and the site museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party — history and hipster culture cohabiting with Shanghai's characteristic élan.

At 632 metres, the observation deck on the 118th floor of China's tallest building offers a stomach-lurching view over the entire city — clear days extending to the Yangtze Delta — from inside a building whose skin twists 120 degrees from base to top.

The classical Ming Dynasty garden in the heart of the Old City is a masterwork of pavilions, rockeries, koi ponds, and covered walkways — surrounded by a covered bazaar where the queue for the legendary soup dumplings at Nanxiang Steamed Bun starts before 8am.

The leafy former French district of plane-tree-shaded streets, art-deco villas, independent boutiques, and sidewalk cafés is Shanghai at its most charming — a neighbourhood where the past and present co-inhabit with unusual elegance.

The impossible cluster of towers on the Pudong east bank — the Pearl Tower, the bottle-opener Shanghai World Financial Center, and the twisting Shanghai Tower (China's tallest building) — is one of the defining skylines of the 21st century.

Stretching six kilometres from the Bund to Jing'an, the world's busiest shopping street pulses with department stores, flagship boutiques, and street-food carts selling roasted chestnuts and sugar-coated strawberries to millions of shoppers daily.

The pleated Shanghai soup dumpling — 18 folds precisely, a delicate skin holding scalding pork broth and minced meat — is the city's greatest gift to gastronomy and best experienced at Din Tai Fung where the craft is performed openly behind glass.

The distinctive bronze-cauldron-shaped museum on People's Square holds one of China's finest collections of ancient bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy, and furniture — 12 permanent galleries covering 6,000 years of Chinese art at no entry charge.

The converted cotton-mill complex on Moganshan Road is Shanghai's premier contemporary art cluster — 100+ galleries, studios, and creative spaces in industrial buildings festooned with street art, where emerging Chinese artists show work alongside international names.

Restored shikumen stone-gate townhouses from the 1920s now house upscale restaurants, bars, boutiques, and the site museum of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party — history and hipster culture cohabiting with Shanghai's characteristic élan.

At 632 metres, the observation deck on the 118th floor of China's tallest building offers a stomach-lurching view over the entire city — clear days extending to the Yangtze Delta — from inside a building whose skin twists 120 degrees from base to top.