Walking Tours of Shanghai

Liz Grabenstein

You may think you know this city inside and out, but do you know which public park used to be a cemetery and specialized in cremating foreigners? Or which Minister of Education was a member of the anti-Manchu assassins association and produced poisons, which he tested on his cats, to assassinate Qing Dynasty officials? A charming walk, packed with both facts and myths will definitely make you look twice at the buildings you usually stroll past on a morning commute.

Shopping Tours Shanghai’s Best of Everything Tour

If shop ‘til you drop isn’t your thing, or if your Chinese bargaining skills aren’t quite up to par, then this is the trip to send guests on. Tours are led by Suzy, Emily, Amy or Claire, a group of girls who live and breathe shopping in this energetic city. They'll lead you to hand selected factories, markets and street stores for the best experience possible. While it’s intimidating for shoppers when the price isn’t marked on items, these ladies take the hassle out of shopping by helping you haggle with the vendors to make sure you get the best deal. Since a full day of Shanghai shopping isn’t complete without a bit of snacking, you will be treated to lunch at an award-winning Shanghainese restaurant to refuel before hitting up the next stop.

A visit to Shanghai isn’t complete without a trip to the fabric market and, in the capable hands of these tour guides, you will work with the best tailors to help make sure your garment comes out exactly as you planned. From copies to original pieces, they are here to make sure that nothing is lost in translation. If you don’t have time to make the trip to the market, they will happily arrange for the tailor to come to your hotel to take measurements and then have the finished piece delivered before your departure. This tour is not just about clothes; trips to the Pearl Market, Flower Market and ceramic shops make this a great way to get your shopping done in one day and learn how to get the best deals when you’re out spending in the city.

RMB 800 per person, including lunch and transportation.

Email: [email protected]. Web: shoppingtoursshanghai.com

Newman Tours’ Ghost Tour

Pay homage to the Jing'an Temple’s Guardian Lions and ask them for protection for the duration of this tour. You walk through some of Shanghai’s haunted lilong, cemeteries and decrepit hotels. From stories of ballroom dancing ghosts to evil emperors, your guide meanders along the streets with you, after dark of course, telling tales of Shanghai’s most famous ghosts. After a search for a mysterious bubbling well, guests dabble in water calligraphy and learn the character that was a dying poet’s last work, written 12 times in his own blood.

After the tour you are invited to sit down for a traditional Ghost Festival Dinner and feast in the company of a hungry spirit. Your fate will be told by fortune sticks as you savour local Shanghainese cuisine and learn about Chinese superstitions concerning the food on your plate. Are these stories fact or fiction? There’s only one way to be sure…

RMB 180 per person for tour, RMB 330 for tour and dinner. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.newmantours.com

UnTour Shanghai’s Street Eats Morning Market Tour

After all this shopping and touring, you’re bound to have worked up quite an appetite. UnTour’s resident Chief Eating Officer (CEO) will take you on a walkabout of Shanghai’s best street eats to learn how to order starchy sustenance like a local. Meeting in the morning at Xiangyang Park, you first catch a peek of the locals doing tai qi, water calligraphy and sword fighting. After working up an appetite watching all that elderly exercise, it’s time for the feast to begin.

A visit to a nearby food stall yields a delicious Chinese breakfast of champions with jianbing and shengjianbao, but there’s plenty more to eat. Your guide leads you through alleys to delicious noodle and dumpling joints, then you’re served green onion delights by the only man in Shanghai who makes them; locals have been known to queue for hours to get their hands on his savoury morsels. To top off all the salty surprises on the trip, the trip concludes with the sheer perfection known as dan ta – or egg tarts to laowai – and not just any egg tarts, the best ones this side of Macau. The tour will make any visitor hungry for more – and it’s a great way to learn about the wide variety of China’s best street food offerings.

USD 180 for a private, all-inclusive tour. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.untourshanghai.com

Jewish Shanghai’s Half-Day Tour

Starting on the Bund, journalist-turned-tour guide Dvir Bar-Gal will tell you the names of the families behind Shanghai’s most famous hotels and streets. From the luxury and opulence of the Peace Hotel to the penniless man who became the real estate mogul responsible for the development of Nanjing Lu, Bar-Gal recreates early Shanghai and showcases the Jewish influence on the city. Two equally fascinating stories – one of a well established family, the other of a rags-to-riches fairytale that is the Chinese dream – share similar fates on the eve of 1 October 1949.

After tales of some of the wealthiest men in Asia, the tour takes a trip forward in time to one of the darkest moments in world history – a visit to Hongkou District that served as the Jewish Ghetto starting in 1943. The Japanese forced nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees to live in this overcrowded district in the northwest of Shanghai, only a 10 minute drive from the glitz and glamour of the Bund. To this day, the area still projects the same poverty and hardship as it did half a century ago. A sombre walk through the ghetto and a visit to a Chinese home where refugees once lived are followed by a tour of Ohel Moishe Synagogue and its museum to further illustrate what life was like in the 1940s for Jews in the Chinese ghetto.

RMB 400 per person. Email: [email protected]. Web: www.shanghai-jews.com