Everything published on Access Shanghai, newest first — the everyday mechanics of visiting the city, section by section.
Shanghai sits on China’s high-speed rail grid, not beside it. Suzhou is about 25 minutes away, Hangzhou about an hour, Beijing roughly four and a half hours — all on the same ticketing system, run by China State Railway Group. The detail that actually changes a trip is not the train, it is which of … Read more
Xintiandi and Tianzifang are both built from the same unit of housing — the shikumen (石库门) lane house — but neither is lived in the way the surrounding blocks still are. Xintiandi kept the facades and rebuilt what was behind them; Tianzifang kept its lanes and filled them with shops. The version people actually still … Read more
What counts as a Shanghai breakfast A Shanghai breakfast is bought outdoors, eaten standing up, and gone in ten minutes. It usually means some combination of youtiao (fried dough stick, 油条), soy milk (doujiang), scallion pancake (cong you bing), and cifantuan. Cifantuan is glutinous rice wrapped around a youtiao and preserved vegetable. Xiaolongbao and shengjianbao … Read more
Shanghai’s genuinely free list is short. The Bund promenade, People’s Square, most ordinary city parks and two major national museums cost nothing to enter. Past that list, caution is warranted. Several landmarks that travel blogs still describe as free now charge for part of the experience, or require an advance booking that works, in practice, … Read more
DiDi (滴滴出行) is the ride-hailing app that has largely replaced hailing a taxi on the street in Shanghai, and it does run in English. The app itself is not the problem. The problem is that its English layer sits on top of a Chinese-language mapping database, and typing an English place name into it does … Read more
Every foreign visitor in mainland China must have their accommodation registered with police within 24 hours of arrival. Hotels do this automatically at check-in. What almost nothing explains is that the registration is tied to the specific address — not the city. Move to a second address, even within Shanghai, and the clock resets. This … Read more
At the Jade Buddha Temple (Yufo Chansi, 玉佛禅寺) in Jing’an district (静安区), the ticket bought at the main gate does not include the hall that actually holds the statue the temple is named for. Seeing the seated jade Buddha requires a second, separate ticket, sold at a different counter inside the grounds — not online, … Read more
Yes, cash still works in Shanghai. The renminbi is legal tender and a driver, market stallholder or small restaurant will take it without comment. But a growing slice of daily transactions in this city were built for a phone, not a wallet, and handing over a 100-yuan note at the wrong counter gets you a … Read more
Which airport saves an hour depends on two things: which side of the Huangpu River (黄浦江) your address sits on, and what time your flight lands. West of the river, landing after the evening rush, Hongqiao’s direct Line 10 beats Pudong’s maglev-and-transfer route by close to fifty minutes. East of the river, in daylight, Pudong … Read more
Xiaolongbao is a steamed, soup-filled dumpling with a thin, pleated wrapper. Shengjianbao is pan-fried, sits on a yeasted dough base, and carries less liquid inside. Both are pork dumplings native to Shanghai. But they behave differently in your hand. That difference should decide which one you order first. Visitors often assume the two are the … Read more
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