Where to stay in Shanghai

Shanghai is a provincial-level direct-administered municipality in China. It has a population of 30,050,000 in the urban area as of 2026, thus making it China's most populous city and more broadly the fifth-largest city in the world by population.

Shanghai is one of four cities in China that are administered as municipalities (市), meaning that it is not part of any province, and its government instead reports directly to the central government in Beijing. There are several ways to rate the size of cities; based on UN numbers, Shanghai is the fifth-largest city in the world after Jakarta, Dhaka, Tokyo and Delhi. By any measure, it is in the top ten for the world and either the largest in China or second to Chongqing.

Shanghai Municipality has 16 administrative districts, each with at least a few hundred thousand people, and Wikivoyage has separate articles for most of them. Here we try to split them up in a way that will make sense for travellers. The historic core of Shanghai, it includes both the old Chinese city and the area of the International Settlement which began in the 1840s and lasted until the 1930s. It can be called Puxi (浦西), downtown Shanghai (上海市区) or the city center (市中心). Today this area is still the core of the city. Most of the tourist attractions and many hotels are here, and many metro lines run through it.

Accommodation in Shanghai can be rivaled by few cities in China, in terms of both variety and services. There are establishments for all types of travelers, from backpacker options for the weary to top-of-the-line hotels and serviced apartments for those wishing to be spoiled. Puxi has both new and old hotels with classy architectural styles and charm, some of them described in stories when Shanghai may have been the only place in China known to much of the rest of the world, while modern amenities commonly found in Pudong rival many hotels in Asia and beyond.

Getting in

Shanghai is one of China's main travel hubs and arriving from pretty much anywhere is easy. Visitors from 54 countries who are transiting through Shanghai are permitted to visit without a visa for up to 240 hours. People visiting under this scheme can travel freely between Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but may not travel beyond the three provincial-level units. At immigration, you will need to present an onward ticket to a country other than the one you arrived from. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan count as separate countries with regard to this scheme.

Getting around

Shanghai has an excellent public transport network with the one of the world's most extensive metro (subway and elevated train) systems as its backbone and buses that go more-or-less everywhere else. Taxis are plentiful, and cheap by international standards, and getting around on foot is often practical. Metro, taxi and walking will be the main means of transport for most travellers. The city is huge (24 million), though, and all transport methods sometimes have problems with congestion.

Wikivoyage contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0; excerpted.