How to Time Your Trip to Shanghai

China's largest city is a bustling center of trade, industry, culture and education. Shanghai has a modern appearance, mixed with fragments of the medieval city. But it also has European features, a reminder of its colonialism past when Western powers raped China of its wealth and treated Shanghai like a playground; an aspect of the city that still pervades its appearance and psyche.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Luggage Sets
• Travel Clothes
• Foreign Language Phrase Books
• Local Guidebooks
• Maps
• Travel Guides
• Airline Tickets To China
• Travel Services
• Cameras
• Film
• Maps
• Cameras

General Considerations

1. Remember that summer is the rainy season in China, and Shanghai is no exception. Shanghai receives average rainfall during the remainder of the year. From April to September it's often hot and humid. The average January low is 32 degrees F and the average July high is 91 degrees F.

2. Find out about upcoming festivals, attractions and live performances.

3. Take care of your flight, transportation and accommodations.

4. Check the weather forecast shortly before leaving, and pack accordingly.

Attractions and Seasonal Events

5. Let Shanghai open its doors to you at the Shanghai Huangpu Tourist Festival. Held in late September, this week-long gala includes tours, performances on floats, tea-culture exchanges, outdoor concerts, great food, art displays and symposiums on international tourism.

6. Celebrate Chinese New Year with more than 1 billion other people. Also called the Spring Festival, this festival in early February includes feasts, decorations, special dances and games. China uses has only one time zone, so when midnight arrives firecrackers explode all across the country.

7. Feeling hungry? Adventurously hungry? Walk west from the Bund on Nanjing Lu to the night market. Here you'll find an exciting, inexpensive little food festival. Queasy eaters be warned: some Chinese boast that they'll eat anything on four legs except a table, and this is demonstrated on Nanjing Lu.

8. Catch a tour-boat from the main dock at the Bund. From the Huangpu River you'll have some great views of the Bund and the rest of Shanghai, and a glimpse of its busy port - one of the world's largest.

9. Experience the best of China's performance arts at the Shanghai Center Theater. The center holds three types of shows: symphony, jazz and acrobatics.

10. Observe traditional park design and architecture at Yu Yuan Garden, dating back four centuries. Beside the garden is the Town God Temple Bazaar, with eclectic wares for sale.

11. Visit one of Shanghai's most famous Buddhist temples, the Temple of the Jade Buddha, which houses a life-size statue of Sakyamuni - the founder of Buddhism - cut out of a giant piece of white jade.

12. Learn about China's dynastic past through the artwork and relics housed in the Art and History Museum.