8 Best Sights in Shanghai, China

The site of the Shanghai World Expo was a barren wasteland until this massive contemporary art museum, housed in a former power plant, opened in late 2012. It did so with a bang, opening the ninth Shanghai Biennale and simultaneously hosting an exhibition from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Rather than a permanent collection, the museum hosts one large-scale exhibition after another. It pulls in top Chinese artists like Cai Guoqiang and is the city's home for major touring exhibitions. Every Tuesday is free entry for all visitors. The PSA is actually about 2½ miles south of the Old City, on the edge of the Huangpu River. You can get here from the Old City or Xintiandi/City Center by taxi or via metro Lines 4 and 8 (and a 15-minute walk from the metro station).

Since the 18th century, this complex, with its traditional red walls and upturned tile roofs, has been a marketplace and social center where local residents gather, shop, and practice qi gong in the evenings. It is overrun by tourists and not as impressive as the ancient palace gardens of Beijing, but Yu Garden is a piece of Shanghai's rapidly disappearing past, and one of the few old sights left in the city.

To get to the garden itself, you must wind your way through the crowded bazaar. The garden was commissioned by the Ming Dynasty official Pan Yunduan in 1559 and built by the renowned architect Zhang Nanyang over 19 years. When it was finally finished it won international praise as "the best garden in southeastern China." In the mid-1800s, the Society of Small Swords used the garden as a gathering place for meetings. It was here that they planned their uprising with the Taiping rebels against the French colonists. The French destroyed the garden during the first Opium War, but the area was later rebuilt.

Winding walkways and corridors bring you over stone bridges and carp-filled ponds and through bamboo stands and rock gardens. Within the park are an old opera stage, a museum dedicated to the Society of Small Swords rebellion, and an exhibition hall of Chinese calligraphy and paintings.

In a former airport hangar and within walking distance of the Long Museum, the Yuz Museum is the brainchild of Chinese-Indonesian art collector Budi Tek. The massive, light-flooded space is perfect for showcasing installations like Maurizio Cattelan's Untitled, an olive tree planted in a cube of dirt, which was featured in his retrospective at New York's Guggenheim. Chinese artists get plenty of showtime, too; in the same exhibition, you will find Ren Jian's painting Stamp Collection, six acrylic-on-canvas versions of stamps from African nations. The museum has Wi-Fi throughout, a small gift shop, and a café where you can watch the sun set. Its cement courtyard, with several sets of stairs, ramps, and a few sculptures, is a good place for kids to roam. Note that, like the Long Museum, the Yuz is in the emerging West Bund arts area, readily reached from the Former French Concession by taxi or metro Line 11.

If you find yourself passing by this tiny temple on your exploration of the Old City, you can make an offering to Buddha with the free incense sticks that accompany your admission. Built in 1600 by the same man who built Yu Garden, it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt in the 1990s. The temple is now a nunnery, and you can often hear the women's chants rising from the halls beyond the main courtyard.

At the southeast end of the Yu Gardens bazaar stands this Taoist temple, built during the early part of the Ming Dynasty and destroyed by fire in 1924. The main hall was rebuilt in 1926, and has been renovated many times over the years. Inside are gleaming gold figures, and atop the roof you'll see statues of crusading warriors—flags raised, arrows drawn. This is a popular place for locals to light incense; expect it to be crowded around major holidays like Chinese New Year.

Billionaire art collectors Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei don't do anything halfway; their Long Museum, designed by Shanghai-based firm Atelier Deshaus, is a testament to the money flowing into supporting contemporary Chinese art. The museum hosts rotating exhibitions, from Qing Dynasty paintings to a show on the past, present, and future of silver in Mexico. Long Museum is also walking distance from Yuz Museum. On the first Tuesday of every month, Long Museum offers free entry. Note that the museum is in the up-and-coming West Bund gallery and arts district to the south. Although you can easily reach the West Bund by taxi from anywhere in central Shanghai, the Former French Concession provides the best public-transit access via metro Lines 7 and 12.

The Old City used to be completely surrounded by a wall, built in 1553 as a defense against Japanese pirates. Most of it was torn down in 1912, except for one 50-yard-long (40-meter-long) piece that still stands at Dajing Lu and Renmin Lu. You can walk through the remnants and check out the rather simple museum nearby, which is dedicated to the history of the Old City (signs are in Chinese). You can also stroll through the tiny neighboring alley of Dajing Lu for a lively panorama of crowded market life in the Old City.