Shanghai in 6 Days on a Budget (Daily Costs)

Six Days in Shanghai: City, Culture, and the Neighborhoods Most Visitors Skip

Six days is enough to do the city properly, add a water-town day, and still get to the corners most three-day visitors never see. This builds on the same spine as our 5-day itinerary ; if the plan is Suzhou, Hangzhou, or a rail hop deeper into China rather than another day inside Shanghai, that’s the Shanghai-as-gateway guide . Set up your VPN before you fly, since Google, Maps, and WhatsApp are all blocked here and app stores are blocked too, so there’s no fixing it after landing.

Book these before you go:

Base and budget. Stay in the French Concession if food and atmosphere matter more to you than proximity to the Bund; it’s the better value neighborhood by a wide margin. Metro is Y3-8 a trip and runs until about 11pm, always cheaper than a taxi for crosstown moves. Bind Alipay or WeChat Pay to a foreign card before you go, or skip it entirely: since mid-2025 foreign contactless cards tap directly at metro turnstiles, no app required. Check whether your passport gets the 30-day visa-free entry (roughly 50 countries, not the US) or only the 240-hour transit before you book flights. Keep cash as backup.

Day 1: The Bund and the old town. Morning walking the Bund, free, the best value activity in the city by a mile. Afternoon at Yu Garden, Y30-40 seasonal, closed Mondays though the free bazaar around it isn’t; skip the bazaar itself, overpriced fake antiques, and be wary of any “Nanxiang” stall near the entrance claiming to be the original. Evening, xiaolongbao at Jia Jia Tang Bao, the local favorite over the polished chains, Y20-30 a basket, Din Tai Fung is fine but it’s Taiwanese, not the Shanghai original.

Day 2: Pudong and the skyline. Morning up Jin Mao Tower’s 88th-floor deck, about Y120, a clean view of the other two towers you can’t get from either of them, better value than Shanghai Tower’s Y180 118th floor. Skip the “bottle opener” Shanghai World Financial Center, its decks have reportedly been closed for renovation since 2023. Afternoon at M50 Art District for galleries in a converted mill, free to wander. Evening, eat in the French Concession rather than a Pudong tower restaurant charging extra purely for the view.

Day 3: Temples and the French Concession. Morning at Jing’an Temple, Y50, free on the 1st and 15th of the lunar month; dress modestly. Afternoon wandering Wukang Road and Anfu Road, and find the Wukang Mansion, the 1924 flatiron Art Deco building at the Wukang/Huaihai Road corner, best shot from the small plaza across the intersection. Evening, shengjianbao at Yang’s Fry Dumpling, Y15-25, then Tianzifang for laneway shops rather than Xintiandi, quieter and cheaper for the same idea.

Day 4: Zhujiajiao water town. The one out-of-city trip that fits inside a Shanghai break without needing a hotel change: about 70 minutes door-to-door via Metro Line 2/10 to Hongqiao Railway Station, then Line 17. The town itself is free to walk, individual gardens Y8-30 each or a combined ticket around Y80 for five sights, gondola rides Y80-150 per boat. Go on a weekday, it’s the single most crowd-sensitive stop on this whole itinerary come the weekend.

Day 5: Shopping, museums, and a warning. Morning on Nanjing Road for the shopping if that’s your thing, but stay alert: it’s the densest scam zone in the city. If a friendly stranger invites you to “practice English” and then suggests tea, walk away; that invitation ends in a bill running into the thousands of yuan with the door blocked until you pay. A legitimate tea experience costs Y50-200. Afternoon at the Shanghai Museum on People’s Square, free, and since a 2025 policy change no advance booking is needed for a normal walk-in visit, the same is true of the newer Pudong branch. Evening, a Huangpu River cruise is fine once, roughly Y90-135 depending on season, but weigh it against walking the Bund at night for free.

Day 6: Hongkou and the art you’d otherwise miss. Most visitors never cross into Hongkou, which is the reason to go. Duolun Road Cultural Street is a quieter, less crowded version of the French Concession’s 1920s-30s architecture, with bronze statues of the writers who once gathered there. Nearby, 1933 Old Millfun, a former British-designed slaughterhouse turned event space, is worth twenty minutes purely for the raw concrete ramps and light-wells. The Ohel Moshe Synagogue area preserves the site of Shanghai’s WWII Jewish refugee quarter, roughly 20,000 people who fled Europe and settled here without visas in the late 1930s and 40s, a genuinely different history from the standard concession-era story. In the afternoon, the Propaganda Poster Art Centre, Y25, hidden inside an ordinary apartment building on Yan’an West Road (7th floor, look for the entrance between two banks), is a better hour than most conventional museums in this city precisely because almost nobody finds it by accident. If you’d rather stay by the river, Power Station of Art ’s permanent collection is free, a converted 1980s coal plant on the Huangpu waterfront, and the Oriental Pearl Tower’s ground-floor Shanghai History Museum is a genuinely good concession-era primer most people skip in favor of just riding up the tower.

Bargain at markets, not restaurants, don’t tip anywhere in the city, and don’t bother haggling in chain stores where prices are fixed regardless of how persistent you are.