Steve's Shanghai Neighborhood Guide

1)       "The Old Shanghai" neighborhood surrounding the Yu Garden, located southeast of the People's Park.

This area used to be called much worse by some people in Shanghai, because it was the poorest neighborhood in the city as many immigrants from other parts of China initially settled here. Today it still is an authentic place where an average Chinese person lives.

Try visit the Yu Garden in the morning and have lunch at the landmark Xiao Long Mantou restaurant there (the restaurant upstairs has a shorter queue as the price is higher -- worth it to skip the line. It also accepts reservation. ). Afterwards, walk the neighborhoods south of the Garden with narrow alleyways full of bicycle shops, barber shops, and people living their lives in the open. On your map of Shanghai, look for the road "Henan Road", a north-south major street in that area. Walk south on this street toward "Fuxing Road ", an east-west street. Around the intersection, you'll find a Muslim mosque, and not too far to the west, a Confucian temple.

If you walk further southeast, departing from Old Shanghai toward the bund, there is the gorgeous Dongjiadu Cathedral in a neighborhood called Dongjiadu, which means Dong Family Wharf in Chinese.  The Dongjiadu Cathedral, built in 1853, was the first church built by foreigners in Shanghai. It was constructed in the early Spanish Baroque style and is still in use today.

For more info on this area, google "Dongjiadu Cathedral". I found an excellent article online: http://www.movius.us/articles/chinanow/oldcity.html

Food stalls in the Yu Garden can be considered a neighborhood of its own

2) The former French Concession, located southwest of the People's Square

This is the most bourgeois neighborhood today, though its historical reputation is more mixed as it was the center of Chinese organized crimes in the 1930's.

Start at the heart of the neighborhood, the Fuxing Park. Go early in the morning and watch the retirees exercising in the park. Near the southwest corner of the park, look for the quiet lanes surrounding the Sun Yat-Sen House. Afterwards, wander south toward Shaoxing Road.

Shaoxing Road, formerly Rue Victor-Emmanuel III., is among the most quintessentially Shanghai streets.  Barely 400-yard long, it is the publishing center of China, lined with Plane trees, an old Russian Jew residential quarter, a house with former gangster connections, a performance theater, a traditional Shanghai style building (Shikumen), a German cafe, a Japanese tea house, Shanghai's smallest park (barely 22,000 s.f.) and several art galleries. 

To gain a flavor of Shanghai's urban life, you could spend some time exploring Shaoxing Road. Below is the guide for this street: 

Facing east, the right side of the street:

No. 5 Shanghai News Publishing Company (former Zhu Ji-ling residence, Zhu was a prominent Catholic Shanghai business man )

No. 9 Shanghai Qun Opera Theater Company

No. 9 New Quixote Restaurant * Sichuan cuisine

No. 23 AdBay Cafe

No. 25 Cafe Vienna

No. 62 Hai Chen Japanese Tea House

No. 62 Shaoxing Park * Shanghai's smallest park

No. 74 Shanghai Culture Publishing Company (former Zhang Qun residence, Zhang was mayor of Shanghai in the 20s)

No. 90 Tree * a leather goods store

Left side of the street:

No. 18 Jin Gu Cun * apartment complex that used to be a predominantly Russian Jews neighborhood

No. 27 Old China Hand Reading Room Cafe (Former residence of Du Yusheng's fourth mistress)

* Du is the most infamous gangster in Shanghai during the 30s

No. 40-44 Angle Gallery

No. 54 Shanghai People's Publishing Company (former residence of Du Yusheng's mother)

No. 96 Shanghai's best preserved Shi-ku-men Style House

No. 96 Le Petit Cafe

After a visit to Shaoxing Road, you can walk north to get on the famous "Huaihai Road", the former Avenue Joffre.  It is a street as evocative as Champs Elysées.   One can easily spend days exploring Huaihai Road and its surrounding streets. There seem to be hundreds of trendy restaurants, bakeries, cafes and night clubs. The streets Julu and Maoming north of Huaihai is club-central in Shanghai. Pick up any English newspaper in Shanghai and you'd find several band performances every night in this neighborhood.

As you walk west on Huaihai Road toward the US Embassy, the neighborhood becomes leafier and the noise quiets down as you pass the triangle area bounded by Huaihai Road and Fuxing Road.  Standing at the triangle facing west, you need to take the left folk in the road and that would place you on Hengshan Road.

 The Shanghai government has designated over 600 historic buildings for protection.  A formidable percentage of these buildings can be found on the two-mile long Hengshan Road.  Walking west on Hengshan road, you will encounter many European style villas and buildings adorned with preservation plaques  -- read these plaques carefully as they reveal pieces of history few visitors get to know.  You'd find Shanghai's most prominent Protestant church, housed in a wood and brick structure of modern Gothic architecture, or the former houses belonging to the prominent Song families from Shanghai, whose daughters married the likes of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek.

Numerous restaurants and bars line Hengshan Road today.  The street is known for its wonderful diversity of food offerings, from Tibetan to American, and a booming night life scene.  However, during China's Cultural Revolution, this street was practically the only place in China where one could find Western style restaurants, or even a proper ice cream.  Many Chinese intellectuals from that era remember fondly of this street, which served as their only visual link to a world that seemed far removed from their daily lives and dreams.

At the western end of Hengshan Road is Xujiahui – a transportation hub, also home to Shanghai's largest Catholic church -- the St. Ignacious Cathedral.

On Yan-an Road, at the northwestern edge of the French concession, stands the Shanghai Exhibition Center. It was called Sino-Russian Friendship Mansion, built at a time when China's relationship with Russia was warmer -- a little piece of Kremlin in Shanghai.  If you choose to proceed west on Yan-an Road, you'd encounter more historic mansions including the former Kadoories mansion (the Children's Palace today) and Eric Moller's Norwegian fantasy house.

3) Nanjing Road, the Bund and People's Square in the center of Shanghai

This part is the tourist central in Shanghai.  The Bund is the symbol of Chinese Capitalism -- save your restaurant receipt to prove it.  There are lots of neon and concrete on Nanjing Road, which seems to be the obligatory walk for tourists as well as the favorite haunt for many touts and scam artists.

On the People's Square stands the excellent Shanghai Museum.

For a walk in this neighborhood, a good alternative to Nanjing road is the parallel Fuzhou Road, a few blocks to the south. You'll find a good collection of book stores, including the Foreigner's Book Store, and many interesting boutique stores.

Walking eastward on Nanjing or Fuzhou Road for about a mile, you will end up at the Bund, a place lined with stately art deco buildings. Many of these buildings are banks and are open to the public. So be sure to wander inside and take a look; it's almost a time machine experience. Please note by far the best view of the Bund is from across the Haungpu River at a bustling river front park in Pudong. Go there after dusk for the best view. With tourist cruise boats sailing down the river amid the neon lit banks, Shanghai seems basking in the romance of the yesteryears and the glory from its bright future.

The Nanjing Road pedestrian shopping district

View from the Oriental Pearl across the Bund. Notice the difference in the water color where the Suzhou Creek meets the Huangpu River.

4)  Old Jewish Ghetto, north of the Bund in the Hongkou District

Just north of the Bund is the old Jewish Ghetto, an area surrounding Tilanqiao (meaning Basket-carrying Bridge in Chinese).  Although the bridge is no longer, the name stuck.

The Ghetto was never the official name of the area. It was more famously known as Little Vienna in the 30s and 40s as many European Jews settled in this area.

The Jewish history in Shanghai is one of the most intriguing stories in Shanghai, in a city full of historical intrigues. If you are interested, I recommend taking a Jewish Ghetto tour in this neighborhood as a starting point.

Shanghai was one of few cities in the world offering refuge to Jews during WWII, and there were tens of thousands Jews in Shanghai during the war. However, the history of Jews in Shanghai dates before the war, and the Jewish footprints were all over Shanghai.

The Iraqi and other Sephardic Jews arrived in the 1800s with the opium trade, some like Sassoon (of the Peace Hotel fame) and Kadoories became prominent figures in Shanghai.  Many Russian Jews arrived after the Bolshevik uprising, and the European Jews flooded Shanghai after the start of WWII. During WWII, Jews also endured the Japanese quarantine order, out of which came the term Jewish Ghetto, an area in Hongkou where many were ordered to stay. There were numerous stories of human struggles and triumphs during that period. Some of these stories were told in Spielberg's movie "Empire of the Sun", which was shot on location in Hongkou.

The Jews also settled all over the city; some built mansions in today's Changnin District, the Russian Jews mostly settled in the apartment complexes (Longtang) in the former French Concession, and of course many Jews were forced to live in the Ghetto in the former Japanese territory during WWII. There were many prominent Jews who had their roots in Shanghai during that period, from Kadoories whose family went on to found the Peninsula fortune, to Mike Blumenthal who became U.S. Treasury Secretary.

To visit the ghetto, a good place to start is Huoshan Park, a small local park located on Huoshan Road. The park has a small memorial, Monument in Memory of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, and an orientation map for the ghetto. The ghetto was bounded by Gongpin Rd (W), Tongbei Rd (E), Zhoujiazui Rd (N) and Huimin Rd (S). Some of the more interesting streets here are Zhoushan Road, Changyang Road and Huoshan Road where one can still see many old dwellings. Also located at Changyang Road is the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue (now The Museum for Jewish Refugees in Shanghai). The museum is currently under renovation, but some people have been able to get in after some negotiations with the guard.

For more information on Jewish history in Shanghai, check out this link: http://www.gluckman.com/ShanghaiJewsChina.html .   Also, the Sino-Judaic Institute has some excellent articles on-line.

5) Suzhou Creek Art District on Moganshan Road, located at the northwest corner of downtown Shanghai

If you are an art lover, check out the Shanghai version of the Meatpacking District set in the middle of an industrial neighborhood on the bank of what used to be most polluted creek in China. Many art studios are housed in former warehouses in this area and together they are creating a bustling art scene in Shanghai.