Nanjing Road

China’s most famous shopping street, running west from the Bund to People’s Square, pedestrianised along its eastern stretch and lit like a fairground after dark. It has been the commercial spine of Shanghai since the 1850s and several of the department stores on it are the original 1930s buildings.

It is loud, crowded and largely aimed at domestic tourists. It is also genuinely worth walking once, because the scale of it explains something about the city that no museum does.

What it costs

⭐ Free. A street.

⚠️ Two persistent approaches to be aware of: an invitation to a tea ceremony, and an invitation to an art student’s exhibition. Both end with a bill far larger than expected. They are not dangerous, they are just expensive; the answer is to keep walking.

When to go

Evening for the lights, daytime for the buildings. Weekends are extremely busy.

⚠️ The metro stops early here. Last trains run somewhere between about 22:00 and 23:00 depending on the line and the direction — hours before the restaurants do. Shanghai is not Tokyo or Seoul in this respect and it catches almost every visitor once. Check the time posted on the platform before you settle in for the evening.

Getting there

East Nanjing Road on lines 2 and 10 for the pedestrian end; People’s Square for the western end. Walking the whole thing takes about forty minutes without stopping.

If you only have an hour

Start at the Bund end and walk west. Look above the shopfronts — the upper storeys are largely untouched 1920s and 1930s commercial architecture, and the ground floors are the only part that has been modernised.

⭐ Turn off it. One block north or south and the crowd disappears entirely; Huanghe Road is a street of small restaurants that locals actually use.

What people get wrong

Shopping on it. The prices are aimed at visitors and the same chains are cheaper everywhere else in the city.