Art deco on the Bund, xiaolongbao in the alley — China's most cosmopolitan city
Shanghai is China's gateway to the world — a city that absorbed European trading empires, survived revolution, and remade itself as a global financial centre without losing its distinctive Shanghainese identity. The Bund's neo-classical façades face Pudong's space-age skyline across the Huangpu River, while the French Concession's plane trees and shikumen lane houses hide the city's most interesting cafes, wine bars, and boutiques.
Shanghai was a modest cotton-trading town until 1842, when the Treaty of Nanking after the First Opium War forced it open to foreign trade. British, French, and American concession zones transformed it into Asia's most cosmopolitan city by the 1930s — the era of jazz, opium dens, and revolutionary politics that gave Shanghai its mythic quality. The Communist victory in 1949 closed the city for decades; Deng Xiaoping's 1990s decision to develop Pudong launched its second golden age.