Shanghai Tourism Guide is an independent travel resource for people planning a trip to Shanghai. We publish long, specific, regularly checked guides — and nothing else. No tours to sell, no hotels to push, no commission on anything you book.
Why this site exists
Shanghai is one of the harder major cities in the world to research from abroad, and not because information is scarce. It is because so much of it is out of date within months.
China’s entry rules for tourists have changed repeatedly in recent years — the visa-free window, the 240-hour transit policy, which ports of entry qualify, which nationalities are eligible. Payment works differently here than almost anywhere else: a visitor who arrives expecting to tap a foreign card will have a difficult first day, and the workarounds for linking an overseas card to Alipay or WeChat Pay have changed more than once. Half the apps a traveller relies on elsewhere do not resolve on a Chinese mobile network. Metro lines open. Museums move to timed-entry booking that requires a passport number and a Chinese phone number to complete.
An English-language guide written in 2019 and lightly refreshed will get most of this wrong, and it will get it wrong confidently. That is the gap this site was built to close.
What we publish
The site launched in April 2026. As of August 2026 there are 130 published guides organised into 16 subject areas — attractions and things to do, food and where to eat, getting around, visas and entry requirements, where to stay, day trips, itineraries from one to seven days, nightlife, family travel, shopping, budget travel, culture and history, seasonal timing, and general practical advice.
Guides run long — typically 3,000 to 6,000 words — because the useful part of Shanghai advice is usually the detail. Which exit of which metro station. What the queue looks like at 10am versus 3pm. Whether the ticket office takes a foreign passport. Which of two similarly named places is the one you actually meant.
A few habits we hold to:
- Prices in renminbi, with a date attached. We quote in RMB rather than converting to a currency that will have moved by the time you read it.
- Chinese characters alongside place names where they will help you — a taxi driver, a ticket window, a map app.
- Named trade-offs rather than superlatives. The Bund at dawn and the Bund at 8pm are different experiences with different costs; we would rather explain the difference than declare a winner.
- Honest about the awkward parts. The guides cover what to do when a payment app rejects your card, why some sites need a passport to book, and where the tourist-facing scams cluster. Leaving that out would make the guides pleasanter to read and worse to use.
How the guides are researched
Anything that can be checked against a primary source is checked against one. In practice that means the Shanghai municipal government’s English portal for civic and attraction information, China’s National Immigration Administration for visa and entry rules, the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the national railway booking system for transport, the China Meteorological Administration for climate figures, and individual venues — Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Disney Resort, the airports — for their own hours, prices and booking conditions. Where a claim rests on one of these, the guide links to it so you can confirm it yourself.
Every guide carries a visible publication or update date. Where a fact is volatile — an entry policy, a ticket price, a transfer rule — we say so in the text rather than presenting it as settled, and we point you at the official source that will be right after we are wrong.
We are not infallible and Shanghai moves quickly. If you find something that has changed, tell us — corrections from readers who have just been are the fastest signal we get.
Independence
This is the part most travel sites are vague about, so to be explicit:
- We take no commission on hotels, tours, tickets or transport. There are no affiliate links anywhere on this site.
- We do not accept payment, gifts or hosted stays in exchange for coverage or placement. Nothing on this site is a paid inclusion.
- No business has ever paid to appear in, or be removed from, a guide, and no business ever will.
The site is funded by advertising. Advertising is bought and served automatically by third parties and the advertisers have no involvement in, or advance sight of, what the guides say — which is precisely why we use it rather than commissions. Where a guide recommends a specific restaurant, hotel or operator, that recommendation is editorial and unpaid. Our privacy policy explains what advertising means for the data collected when you visit.
Who writes this
Shanghai Tourism Guide is published by a small independent editorial team writing for international visitors. We are not a Chinese tourism body, we are not affiliated with any government agency, tour operator, hotel group or booking platform, and we do not speak for the city.
Our footer says 上海 · Written on foot, which is the standard we try to hold: the details in these guides are meant to be the kind you only learn by standing in the queue.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions, press enquiries and privacy requests all go through the same place — the contact page. We read everything that arrives.