Today, the Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai’s Old Town is all that remains of the city’s pre-colonial past. Colonial are visible in the period architecture in the French Concession, as well as the grand old buildings - the Customs House, Peace Hotel and Shanghai Club - along the grand parade of the Bund.

Across the river from this picture of the past is Shanghai’s future, the Pudong New Area, with the outrageously modern Orient Pearl Tower, containing a museum that traces the city’s rise against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Shanghai has seen a lot of history and has kept many relics of it intact, with municipal conservation policies preserving large swathes of the colonial architectural inheritance.

Add to this a city government that has not been too narrowly focused on commerce to neglect wider urban planning issues and the result is one of China’s most elegant cities and certainly its most sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

The Huangpu River separates the old and new Shanghai, with the historic Bund promenade on one side and the futuristic Pudong New Area on other. The Old Town contains some cultural delights, such as the Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar, while Renmin Square is the focus of the city’s Communist tradition, the site of many a protest and home to the Shanghai Government.

Shanghai experiences climatic extremes, with bitter winters and hot and humid summers. The most popular time to study is normally during the autumn, summer or spring months.

Our program allows you plenty of time to discover your new country, culture and customs. Below are some of our recommended highlights. Some tours and packages can be organized when booking your program, please see the program price page for more information.

bund
Street of legends, the Bund is actually two kilometres (1.2 miles) of historic riverfront buildings, separated from the Huangpu River (which has now risen above street level) since the mid-1990s by a raised terrace embankment. It runs roughly from Nan Suzhou Lu in the north to Jinling Dong Lu in the south. The word ‘bund’ is an Anglo-Indian construction from the Hindi ‘band’, or embankment, recalling the flood barriers that used to line it. The name is a hangover from the British colonial regime in the city and many of the landmark buildings originally belonged to British companies.

The grand remnants of colonial power are crowded along the Bund. These include the Customs House (with its famous bell ‘Big Ching’), the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (now the Pudong Development Bank), the former Shanghai Club, the Peace Hotel (one of Asia’s Art Deco masterpieces and a favourite of Noel Coward), the Glen Line Building, the Bank of China and many others. This parade of Shanghai’s past also looks straight onto its future, the glittering towers of the Pudong New Area on the opposite riverbank. The Bund is an absolute must-see for any first-time visitor to Shanghai.

shanghai museum
Rebuilt in the shape of an ancient Chinese bronze ritual vessel, in 1994, the Shanghai Museum houses over 120,000 historical and artistic treasures and is one of the city’s cultural gems. Its four storeys present a chronological and stylistic tour of China’s greatest artistic traditions, with bronzes, sculptures, ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, jades, coins, furniture and ethnic minority folk art, as well as special exhibitions. Particular highlights are the display of ancient bronzes on the entrance level and the Chinese painting on the floor above. Given the size of the collection, only some 3% of the museum can be shown at any one time.

yuyuan gardens and bazaar
A fine survival of the pre-colonial era, the Yuyuan Gardens are also the core of Shanghai’s most frenetic tourist bazaar, with stalls and eating houses packed together in brightly colored alleys that recall the sets from the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000). The gardens and bazaar cover several city blocks, stretching south from Fuyou Lu to Fangbang Dong Lu.

A haven of tranquillity after the throng of tourists in the bazaar, the Yuyuan Gardens (in fact the Yu Gardens – Yu Yuan) was founded by a family of Imperial officials, in 1559, during the Ming Dynasty. Although looted by the Western powers during the 19th century, the gardens still preserve an exquisite catalogue of Ming garden design. The curiosities include many tunnels and grottos, a stone boat for staging river parties, quiet pools, a fine Chinese opera stage, a hall that became the headquarters of the Small Swords Society – one of the most important 19th-century patriotic societies – as well as many other delightful corners.

Outside this walled tranquillity, the bazaar presses multifarious souvenirs on visitors, however, one eating house in particular, the Mid-Lake Pavilion Teahouse, has become an attraction in itself, with queens and presidents ceremoniously taken to visit it.

french concession
Lined with French colonial-era architecture that survives remarkably unspoiled in the heart of this dynamic city, the French Concession is – in film terms – the Empire of the Sun to Yuyuan Garden’s Crouching Tiger. It typifies Shanghai’s international sophistication at its most relaxed and harmonious. Particular gems include the grounds of the Ruijin Guest House, 118 Ruijin Er Lu, formerly the Morris Estate and full of garden cafés and restaurants, as well as the bars and clubs of Maoming Nan Lu. Fuxing Park has its shady walks and own Hong Kong-derived bar strip and there are many old residences along Sinan Lu (including ones belonging to Sun Yatsen and Zhou Enlai) and some fine colonial-period hotels – the Garden Hotel, 58 Maoming Nan Lu, and the Jinjiang Hotel, 59 Maoming Nan Lu. Most Western visitors will feel so at home in this area that they will not want to leave.

Site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party Not everybody will want to see this site, which stands as testimonial to the fact that Shanghai was the nursery of Chinese Communism. Here, the Chinese Communist Party was formed, in a room belonging to one of the delegates, Li Hanjun, on 23 July 1921. Another delegate, Mao Zedong, was one of only two of 13 that ever served in the first Chinese Communist government, formed in 1949. The modern museum occupies the whole building and documents the formative years of the CCP. Renovated in 1998, it incorporates delights such as a life-size wax diorama of the first meeting, with Mao centre stage, at his most idealized.

shanghai municipal history museum
Shanghai’s most modern – and probably most expensive – museum, the Shanghai Municipal History Museum, occupies the lowest ball of Pudong’s signature Orient Pearl Tower and uses all the latest interactive devices to tell the city’s history, including a diorama of a ‘main street’ from the 1920s. The museum documents 6000 years, with sights, sounds and even scents of the colonial era. But the most recent exhibits – such as the lion dogs that used to guard the old Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building – are the most interesting. The high entrance fee reflects the admission price for the Tower itself – there is no way to get into the museum without entering the Tower, packaging past and future in one.

excursions

renmin square
An unmissable central landmark of Shanghai, Renmin Square was the site of massed Red Guard demonstrations in the 1960s and Shanghai’s own 1989 protests. Now it is the peaceful setting for some of Shanghai’s chief modern civic buildings. The Shanghai Grand Theatre and Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall flank the Shanghai Government on the north side, while the Shanghai Museum (see Key Attractions) stands in the center.

hongkou park
A pleasant park with a boating lake and a quiet atmosphere, Hongkou Park also holds the Tomb of Lu Xun, which gives the park its other name, Lu Xun Park, and the museum of the Lu Xun Memorial Hall. Lu Xun (1881-1936), novelist and essayist, is celebrated as the writer who created modern Chinese literature with a vernacular fictional style that is worlds away from outworn classical influences. This is a place of pilgrimage for the great writer’s devotees – other visitors can simply enjoy the park.

longtangs
Longtangs are the signature domestic architecture of Shanghai, a melange of British-style terraced housing and the Chinese central courtyard, with each house traditionally sublet ad infinitum into warren-like neighborhood communities. The most cosmetic renovation of the longtang style can be seen in the new Xintiandi entertainment area off Huangpi Nan Lu, paved and prettified for tourists. More authentic examples, inhabited by actual residents rather than bars and franchise coffee chains, can be found throughout the French Concession area.