Written by RuinMyTrip Editorial from published research and official sources, not from a personal trip. It is not a traveler review and is never counted in the community rating. How we research.
destination · Shanghai
Shanghai will amaze you and then immediately confiscate your Google account
Review of Shanghai
Been to Shanghai? This page needs you more than it needs us.
A first-hand review outranks desk research every time, and yours will sit above this one.
Share your experienceShanghai is one of the easiest arguments for visiting China you'll find anywhere, and also one of the clearest examples of why you need to prepare before you land rather than after. The skyline across the Huangpu River from the Bund, with the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Tower rising out of the Lujiazui financial district in Pudong, is genuinely one of the great modern city views on earth, and it costs nothing to walk the riverside promenade and look at it. The Shanghai Metro, first opened in 1993, is now the largest metro network in the world by route length, and a single ride costs somewhere between 3 and 10 yuan depending on distance. If you're staying more than a day or two, a Shanghai Public Transportation Card is the move, a 20 yuan refundable deposit gets you a card that works on the metro, buses, and taxis, and you top it up at any station. The Maglev train from Pudong International Airport is the other classic Shanghai experience, and it is worth doing once purely for the number on the display. A one way ticket is 50 yuan, or 40 yuan if you show your same day flight ticket, and the 8 minute, roughly 30 kilometer run to Longyang Road station tops out around 300 km per hour under current commercial operation, down from the 431 km per hour it used to hit before a 2021 speed reduction. Just know that Longyang Road is not downtown, it's a metro transfer point, so the Maglev saves you time getting off the airport grounds, not the whole trip into the city. Where Shanghai gets genuinely frustrating is connectivity and money, and both require homework before you board your flight. China's Great Firewall blocks Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and X entirely, along with every language version of Wikipedia, which has been blocked since May 2019. A VPN has to be installed and paid for before you arrive, because the websites and app stores that distribute VPNs are themselves blocked once you're inside the firewall. On the money side, China now runs on WeChat Pay and Alipay far more than on cash or foreign cards at small vendors, street food stalls, and even some taxis. WeChat Pay does accept linked Visa, Mastercard, and JCB cards, a capability added around January 2018, but foreign users have to complete an extra identity check with a photo ID and a selfie, and a linked foreign card can pay merchants but cannot top up your in app WeChat balance. Alipay's answer for tourists is a feature called Tourpass, introduced in November 2019, which lets you preload the app with a yuan equivalent of foreign currency instead of connecting a Chinese bank account. Entry itself has gotten meaningfully easier the last couple of years. China has been steadily expanding its unilateral visa free list through 2025, adding Uzbekistan and five South American countries including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay in June 2025, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain later that same month, Azerbaijan in July, Russia in September, and Sweden in November. A separate temporary 30 day visa free arrangement, currently set to run through the end of 2026, covers most EU member states, plus Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the UK. Notably absent from all of that is the United States, American passport holders still need to apply for a visa in advance. There's also a visa free transit window, commonly cited as 144 hours, that lets eligible nationalities transiting through Shanghai and the surrounding Jiangsu and Zhejiang region skip a visa if they can show onward travel to a third country, though exact eligible-country counts and fine print shift often enough that you should double check your specific passport against current rules before you book.
What was great
The physical city delivers. The Bund's waterfront skyline view is free, the metro is huge, cheap, and covers 16 districts, and neighborhoods like the French Concession and the Old City around Yu Garden give you genuinely different textures of the same city within a short ride of each other. China's 2025 visa free expansion also means a meaningfully longer list of nationalities, including several South American and Gulf countries added mid year, can now show up without applying for anything in advance, and a temporary 30 day waiver running through the end of 2026 covers most of the EU, the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. Getting around once you're there is a genuine strength. The Maglev is a novelty worth the 40 to 50 yuan, and the broader metro system, the largest by route length in the world, keeps most trips under 10 yuan. A rechargeable transit card removes the need to fumble with ticket machines after your first day.
What nearly ruined the trip
The friction is almost entirely digital and financial, and it hits before you've even had a coffee. The Great Firewall blocks Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X, and all of Wikipedia, so anything you'd normally do to look something up or message someone at home requires a VPN you should have installed before departure, since VPN providers' own sites are blocked from inside the country. Cash and foreign cards are accepted less and less at everyday vendors, meaning you're pushed toward WeChat Pay or Alipay, both of which require extra setup for foreigners, from identity verification with a selfie on WeChat to preloading foreign currency through Alipay's Tourpass feature. Neither is instant, and neither is intuitive if you're doing it for the first time from an airport arrivals hall. American travelers specifically get left out of the recent visa free wave entirely and still need to apply in advance, and the visa free transit rules that do exist for other passports come with conditions, on onward travel, on which cities count, on time limits, that are worth confirming close to your travel date rather than trusting an old blog post.
Safety
★★★★★ Felt safeValue for money
★★★★☆ Good valueComments
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