Shanghai doesn’t feel like a green city from the raised expressways, but it is a city of parks. The government counted 1,013 of them in August 2025 and cited about 1,100 in early 2026, most of them free. The best parks in Shanghai aren’t really sights. They’re where the city lives in public: retirees dancing in formation at seven in the morning, card games under the plane trees, couples rowing on a lake, and at weekends the parents of unmarried children trading CVs in People’s Park.
That makes the choice less about which park is prettiest and more about what you want from it. A first walk in the old French Concession? A whole day of open space with children? A serious botanical garden? Or a quiet hour somewhere with history? This guide covers the eleven parks and gardens worth crossing town for, what each costs, when to go, and what to do there. It also covers the 24-hour parks, the seasonal flowers, and the mistakes that leave visitors walking round a locked gate.
Table of Contents
- The best parks in Shanghai at a glance
- City-centre parks
- The big green escapes
- Gardens for plant lovers
- Which park suits you
- Park life: what to watch for
- Parks through the seasons
- Parks open 24 hours
- Practical tips
- What people get wrong
- Frequently Asked Questions
The best parks in Shanghai at a glance
If you only have time for one, make it Fuxing Park early in the morning for park life, or Century Park for space. For plants, go to Chenshan Botanical Garden, the most ambitious garden in the city and worth the trip out to Songjiang. Here’s how all eleven compare.
| Park | District | Entry | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fuxing Park | Huangpu (former French Concession) | Free; 05:00–21:00 | Morning dancing, tai chi and plane trees |
| People’s Park | Huangpu | Free | The weekend marriage market |
| Jing’an Sculpture Park | Jing’an | Free | Outdoor sculpture and the Natural History Museum |
| Zhongshan Park | Changning | Free | An old colonial-era garden with local life |
| Lu Xun Park | Hongkou | Free; opens 05:00, closes 21:00 (22:00 in summer) | Literary history and a lakeside walk |
| Century Park | Pudong | Free; open 24 hours | Space, bikes, picnics and plum blossom |
| Gongqing Forest Park | Yangpu | Free; forest train 20 yuan | Woods, boating and a day out with children |
| Expo Culture Park | Pudong | Free park; some attractions ticketed | A new riverside park, with hills and a giant greenhouse |
| Chenshan Botanical Garden | Songjiang | 60 yuan | Serious gardens and the quarry garden |
| Shanghai Botanical Garden | Xuhui | Some areas ticketed separately | Bonsai, greenhouses and spring flower shows |
| Guilin Park | Xuhui | Free | A classical garden and osmanthus in autumn |
Most city parks are free and need no booking. The exceptions are the botanical gardens and a few attractions inside the bigger parks.
City-centre parks
Fuxing Park
If you see one park in Shanghai, make it this one, and go before nine. Fuxing Park opened in 1909 as Gujiazhai Park and was known for decades as the French Park, at the heart of what was the French Concession. The city describes it as one of Shanghai’s earliest public parks and the only garden preserved in the classical French style. There are formal beds, a rose garden, a lotus pond and a rockery, and more than 1,700 plane trees over fifty years old. There’s also, a little incongruously, a statue of Marx and Engels.
The reason to come early is the people. From when the gates open at 05:00, the paths fill with ballroom dancers, sword-wielding tai chi groups, choirs, badminton players and men playing cards on folding stools. It’s the best free show in Shanghai, and nobody minds you watching. The park is free and open until 21:00. You’ll find it at 105 Yandang Road, a short walk from Xintiandi, and Sinan Mansions is just across the road to the south. Combine it with our French Concession walking tour for a whole morning.
People’s Park
People’s Park, on West Nanjing Road at the centre of the city, is a pleasant, slightly scruffy green space on the site of the old racecourse. It’s worth a visit at a weekend for one thing: the marriage market. On weekend afternoons, parents and grandparents of unmarried adults line the paths with umbrellas and laminated sheets listing age, height, education, job, salary and whether the child owns a flat. They then negotiate on their children’s behalf, usually without the children. It’s an informal gathering rather than an organised event, so there are no official hours. Go after lunch on a Saturday or Sunday and you’ll find it. Be discreet with a camera: the people involved are serious about it.
Jing’an Sculpture Park
A modern park off Shimen No. 2 Road in Jing’an, with big lawns, outdoor sculpture and the Shanghai Natural History Museum built into the park. It’s free, and the city lists it among the parks open around the clock. It’s also a quietly good plum-blossom spot, with about 200 trees of around 100 varieties. Come here if you’re visiting the Natural History Museum with children, or if you want a calm break between the malls of West Nanjing Road and Jing’an Temple. Our round-up of the best museums in Shanghai covers the Natural History Museum.
Zhongshan Park
Zhongshan Park in Changning began as a private garden laid out by a British land agent and was known in English as Jessfield Park; the city’s own pages use the Chinese name, Zhaofeng Park. It covers about 20 hectares in an English landscape style blended with Chinese garden design, with a marble pavilion, lawns and Houshan Hill, an artificial hill first built in 1958. It’s free. It feels more lived-in than grand, a neighbourhood park full of older residents, which is its charm. Zhongshan Park station sits right beside it. Opening hours have varied, so if you’re coming late, check the notice at the gate.
Lu Xun Park
Lu Xun Park in Hongkou, once Hongkou Park, is the most interesting park in the north of the city because of what’s inside it. Lu Xun, one of the most celebrated Chinese writers of the 20th century, lived his last years nearby. His tomb is here, a national-level protected site, and so is the Shanghai Luxun Museum, which is free. The park also holds the Meiyuan Garden memorial to the Korean independence activist Yun Bong-gil, and Tian’ai Lake, with cherry blossom in spring and lotus in summer. The park covers 22.37 hectares and is free. It opens at 05:00 and closes at 21:00 in winter, with a later closing of 22:00 in summer, so check the gate notice. Check the museum’s opening days before you plan around it. Hongkou Football Stadium station, on Lines 3 and 8, is the nearest stop. Lu Xun’s former residence is nearby on Shanyin Road, if you want to make an afternoon of it.
The big green escapes
Century Park
Century Park in Pudong is the city’s big open space: 140.3 hectares of lawns, woods and water. The city calls it downtown Shanghai’s largest free park. It has been open 24 hours since 1 May 2024, when more than 3,000 metres of fencing came down and seven new gateways opened. Jingtian Lake is at its centre, and the park also has an open-air music square, a musical fountain and the Century Flower Bell. Its 100,000-square-metre plum garden, with more than 3,000 trees of 30 varieties, is one of the best places in the city in February. It’s also a classic cherry-blossom spot in spring.
Bring a picnic, a frisbee or a kite, and rent a bike or a pedalo if they’re running. With children it’s an easy half-day, and Shanghai Museum East is a short ride away. The address is 1001 Jinxiu Road, and Century Park station on Line 2 is the obvious stop. Our guide to cherry blossom in Shanghai has more on the spring season here.
Gongqing Forest Park
Out in the north-east of the city on the Huangpu, at 2000 Jungong Road in Yangpu, Gongqing Forest Park is the closest thing central Shanghai has to a forest. The city counts more than 300,000 trees of over 200 species. The main northern park covers more than 108 hectares, and Wanzhu Park adds nearly 16 more to the south. Admission is free. Inside you can ride horses, fish, hire boats and barbecue, and children love the little forest train. It runs 1,000 metres through woods, over a stream and through a tunnel, from 09:00 to 16:30, for 20 yuan a ride or 30 yuan for one adult and one child.
It’s a full-day park rather than a stroll. Pack food, go on a weekday if you can, and expect it to be busy with families at weekends and in spring, when it has hosted flower displays. Getting there is easiest by taxi or ride-hailing. Check the Metro app for the nearest station to whichever gate you’re using, because the park is long.
Expo Culture Park
One of Shanghai’s newest big parks fills the old 2010 Expo site on the Pudong riverbank, and it’s still changing. The northern section opened in December 2021, and the 65-hectare southern section followed on 20 September 2024, with the Twin Hills, an artificial landscape rising to 48 metres and planted with more than 7,000 trees, and the World Flower Garden. It also brought the Shanghai Greenhouse, a 22,000-square-metre glasshouse with three themed pavilions. There’s also Shenyuan, a five-hectare classical Chinese garden.
The park itself is free, but some attractions, including the Twin Hills and the greenhouse, need a reservation or ticket. Check the park’s WeChat mini program for current prices and booking before you go. There are five entrances. By metro, take Line 13 to Shibo Avenue (Exit 4) or Line 7 to Houtan (Exit 4). Climb the Twin Hills late in the afternoon for a view of the river and the bridges, and you’ll see why it has become one of the city’s favourite weekend parks so quickly.
Gardens for plant lovers
Chenshan Botanical Garden
Chenshan, out in Songjiang at 3888 Chenhua Highway, is Shanghai’s great botanical garden and the one park on this list worth a special trip. It covers 207 hectares in four zones, with more than twenty specialist gardens, a children’s botanical garden and the 17-hectare Chenshan hill. The city says it was designated a national-level botanical garden in 2026, so expect signs and maps to change name. Entry is 60 yuan.
Don’t miss the quarry garden, which the garden calls the Pit Garden: a former quarry turned into a sunken garden of cliffs, pools and walkways. It’s one of the most dramatic gardens in Shanghai. The plum gardens near Gate 1 are the reason to come in February. Check opening hours on the garden’s official WeChat account before you set off. It’s a long way from the centre: allow most of a day, and take a taxi for the last stretch if the metro leaves you short.
Shanghai Botanical Garden
The older, closer botanical garden sits at 1111 Longwu Road in Xuhui. Its strengths are the bonsai collection (penjing) and the greenhouses. It’s also the main venue of the Shanghai International Flower Show, which in 2026 ran from 18 April to 10 May. The greenhouses are ticketed separately, so check prices and opening hours at the gate. It’s a better choice than Chenshan if you have half a day rather than a whole one.
Guilin Park
Guilin Park, at 128 Guilin Road in Xuhui, is a classical Chinese garden with a raffish history. It was built from 1929 as the private residence of Huang Jinrong, one of the gangster bosses of 1930s Shanghai, and opened as a public park in 1958. Today it’s a small, intricate garden of rockeries, corridors, pavilions and ponds. It has more than 1,000 osmanthus trees, and the city’s greening bureau calls it the Shanghai park with the largest area of osmanthus and the most varieties. Come in September and October, when the osmanthus flowers and the whole park smells of it. Entry used to cost 2 yuan, but the park has been permanently free since 25 September 2020. Guilin Park station on Lines 12 and 15 is right outside. Opening hours have changed in recent years, so check them at the gate.
Which park suits you
Eleven parks is too many for most trips, so here’s how to choose.
- First time in Shanghai, one morning free: Fuxing Park at 07:00, then walk the plane-tree streets of the former French Concession. Nothing else on this list gives you as much of the city in an hour.
- Travelling with young children: Century Park for lawns and space, or Gongqing Forest Park for the forest train, boats and a picnic. Both are full days if you let them be.
- Keen gardener: Chenshan, without question, and the Shanghai Botanical Garden’s bonsai if you have a spare half-day. In September or October, add Guilin Park for the osmanthus.
- Interested in history: Lu Xun Park for the writer’s tomb and museum, Fuxing Park for the French Concession, and Zhongshan Park for its origins as a foreign-run garden.
- Curious about everyday Shanghai: People’s Park on a weekend afternoon for the marriage market, and any central park at dawn for the dancing.
- Short of time near Pudong’s sights: Expo Culture Park. Climb the Twin Hills at the end of the afternoon for a view of the river.
- Want an evening walk: Century Park, which never closes, or one of the riverside greenways along the Huangpu.
- Caught by rain: the greenhouses at the Shanghai Botanical Garden or the Shanghai Greenhouse at Expo Culture Park, which keep you dry while you still see plants.
On a short trip, two parks is plenty: one in the early morning for the people, and one big park on a free afternoon for space.
Park life: what to watch for
The parks are where you see Shanghai’s older residents at their most sociable, and a lot of what happens there is worth seeing in its own right:
- Early-morning exercise. From opening until about nine, the central parks fill with tai chi, sword and fan routines, group stretching and backwards walking. Fuxing and Lu Xun parks are the best for this.
- Dancing. Ballroom couples in the morning, and line dancing and square dancing to portable speakers in the evening, often in the same spot.
- Music. Amateur choirs, erhu players and opera singers, especially at weekends.
- Games. Cards, Chinese chess and mahjong on stone tables, with a crowd of advisers watching every hand.
- The marriage market in People’s Park on weekend afternoons.
Watching is fine, and so is joining in at the back of a tai chi group if you’re invited. Ask before photographing anyone close up. For more on the traditions behind some of this, see our guide to Shanghai’s traditional culture.
Parks through the seasons
| Season | What’s out | Where to go |
|---|---|---|
| Late January–February | Plum blossom | Century Park, Chenshan, Jing’an Sculpture Park |
| March–April | Cherry blossom, then tulips and the spring flower shows | Century Park, Lu Xun Park, Gongqing, Shanghai Botanical Garden |
| June–August | Lotus | Fuxing Park, Lu Xun Park; early mornings and evenings to avoid the heat |
| September–October | Osmanthus | Guilin Park |
| November–early December | Autumn colour: ginkgo, maples and plane trees | Fuxing Park, Zhongshan Park, Lu Xun Park’s red maples |
Bloom dates move from year to year with the weather, and the city’s parks publish forecasts in the weeks before each season. Our guides to Shanghai in spring and Shanghai in autumn cover the rest of what’s on.
Parks open 24 hours
Shanghai has been taking down park fences. By the end of 2023 the city said more than 60% of its urban parks, including Jing’an Sculpture Park, were open around the clock. Century Park followed on 1 May 2024, and Pudong aimed to open all its parks around the clock by the end of 2024. Since 1 September 2025, parks that open around the clock have had to keep at least one toilet open overnight.
Not every park has joined in, and some have reverted. Lu Xun Park closes at 21:00 in winter and 22:00 in summer, and Fuxing Park closes at 21:00. If you want an evening walk, Century Park is the safe bet. For anywhere else, check the hours at the gate rather than trusting a list.
Practical tips
- Most parks are free and need no booking. The botanical gardens, the Expo Culture Park greenhouse and some attractions inside parks charge, usually by phone payment.
- Pay by phone. Ticket desks, boat hire and snack stalls take Alipay and WeChat Pay. Our guide to mobile payment for tourists covers the set-up.
- Go early. Between 06:00 and 09:00 is when park life is at its liveliest and the light is best. By midday on a weekday most city parks are quiet.
- Avoid public holidays for the big parks and botanical gardens, which fill with families.
- Pack for the weather. In summer the parks are hot and humid by mid-morning, so go early or in the evening. In winter they’re damp and grey but almost empty.
- Toilets are free and plentiful in the main parks. Carry tissues.
For more ways to spend a day without spending money, see our guide to free things to do in Shanghai.
What people get wrong
- Turning up at lunchtime to see park life. The dancing and tai chi happen early in the morning and again in the evening.
- Treating Chenshan as a quick trip. It’s in Songjiang, far from the centre. Allow most of a day.
- Assuming every park is open 24 hours. Many are, but Fuxing and Lu Xun parks close at night. Check the gate.
- Expecting the marriage market every day. It’s a weekend-afternoon gathering in People’s Park.
- Confusing the two sculpture parks. Jing’an Sculpture Park is in the city centre. Shanghai Sculpture Park is a different place, out at Sheshan in Songjiang.
- Using an old price list. Several parks that once charged, including Guilin Park, are now free, while new attractions such as the Expo greenhouse charge. Check current prices on the park’s own channels.
- Photographing people up close without asking, especially at the marriage market.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best park in Shanghai?
For a first visit, Fuxing Park early in the morning, for its plane trees and park life. For open space, Century Park. For gardens, Chenshan Botanical Garden.
Are parks in Shanghai free?
Most are. Fuxing, People’s, Zhongshan, Lu Xun, Jing’an Sculpture, Century, Gongqing and Guilin parks are free. Chenshan Botanical Garden costs 60 yuan, and some areas of the Shanghai Botanical Garden and some attractions in Expo Culture Park are ticketed.
Which parks in Shanghai are open 24 hours?
Century Park has been open 24 hours since 1 May 2024, and the city lists Jing’an Sculpture Park among its round-the-clock parks. Others, including Fuxing Park and Lu Xun Park, close at night, so check the gate.
When is the People’s Park marriage market?
On weekend afternoons. It’s an informal gathering rather than an official event, so there are no set hours. Go on a Saturday or Sunday after lunch.
Where can I see tai chi in Shanghai?
In almost any city park early in the morning. Fuxing Park, which opens at 05:00, and Lu Xun Park are the best.
Do I need to book a park in Shanghai?
Not for the ordinary city parks, which you simply walk into. Some attractions inside parks, such as the Twin Hills and the greenhouse at Expo Culture Park, need advance booking, so check the park’s WeChat mini program before you go.
What is the best park in Shanghai for children?
Century Park for space and bikes, Gongqing Forest Park for the forest train and boats, and Chenshan for its children’s botanical garden. Our Shanghai with kids guide has more.
How much is Chenshan Botanical Garden?
60 yuan. Check opening hours on the garden’s official WeChat account before you go.
Where can I see osmanthus in Shanghai?
Guilin Park in Xuhui, which has more than 1,000 osmanthus trees, in September and October.
Where is the best plum blossom in Shanghai?
Century Park’s plum garden has more than 3,000 trees of 30 varieties. Chenshan and Jing’an Sculpture Park are also good, and February is the peak.
Parks are one of the best things about Shanghai, and almost all of them are free. For the rest of the city, start with our list of things to do in Shanghai. Park pages, flower forecasts and opening notices are published on the Shanghai government’s English portal and by the city’s landscaping and city appearance bureau.
Photo credits.
Guilin Park: Guilin Gongyuan by Fayhoo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Fuxing Park: Fuxing Park 2226 by J. Patrick Fischer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
People’s Park board game: Board game People’s Park Shanghai by kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Jing’an Sculpture Park: 2011 Jing’an Sculptures Park 2 by J. Patrick Fischer / Peter Woytuk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Zhongshan Park pavilion: Marble Pavilion of Jessfield Park by Fayhoo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Century Park: 2011 Century Park 3 by J. Patrick Fischer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Gongqing Forest Park: 卧河 – panoramio by dengzheng-yu, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Chenshan quarry garden: Chenshanzhiwuyuan by Brookqi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Shanghai Greenhouse at Expo Culture Park: Expo Culture Park 09 by Nanhuajiaren, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
