Shanghai

Shanghai moves with a distinctly modern confidence. Art Deco heritage, riverfront skylines, fashion, dining and international energy create a city where old concessions and future-facing ambition meet.

Shanghai opened to foreign trade after 1842, and the British, American and French settlements that grew along the Huangpu made it the commercial capital of East Asia by the 1930s. The Bund, the river embankment of banks, trading houses and hotels, preserves that era in granite and Art Deco; across the river, Pudong, farmland until the 1990s, now carries the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China.

Behind the Bund, the former French Concession is the most agreeable quarter of the city: avenues of plane trees, villas and lane houses, boutiques and restaurants around Wukang Road and Xintiandi. The Old City keeps the Yu Garden and its teahouse, and the Shanghai Museum holds one of China’s finest collections of bronzes and ceramics. The canal town of Zhujiajiao, with its stone bridges, lies within an easy day trip.

Spring, from April to May, and autumn, from late September to November, are the most comfortable seasons: mild, mostly dry and ideal for walking the Bund and the plane-tree streets. Autumn is also the season of hairy crab from the lakes around the city, a local passion, and of the November art fairs of the West Bund, when the riverside galleries open their new exhibitions.

June brings the plum rains, a humid and overcast season, along with the Shanghai International Film Festival; July and August are hot, with occasional typhoons. Winter is cold and damp rather than severe, and quiet, though Chinese New Year and the National Day holiday in early October bring heavy domestic travel. The Lantern Festival at the Yu Garden closes the New Year celebrations.

Shanghai’s grand hotels follow the river. Fairmont Peace Hotel, opened as the Cathay Hotel in 1929, is the Art Deco landmark of the Bund; The Peninsula Shanghai stands at its northern end, beside the former British consulate; Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund occupies the former Shanghai Club; across the river, Mandarin Oriental Pudong, Shanghai faces the Bund from the water’s edge, and Park Hyatt Shanghai fills the upper floors of the Shanghai World Financial Center.

LVXVRY books them through Accor Preferred, Hilton for Luxury, Mandarin Oriental Fan Club and Hyatt Privé — at the official hotel rate, with the privileges each programme attaches to the stay. For The Peninsula, LVXVRY advises on and arranges the stay. Rooms facing the river are the first to go and are worth requesting early.