7 trips · Day trips & rail
Beyond Shanghai
Shanghai is twenty-five minutes from Suzhou and under an hour from Hangzhou. This covers what is worth leaving the city for, and the booking mechanics that undo most attempts.
Suzhou in one day, done properly
Classical gardens, canals and silk, twenty-five minutes away. The single best day trip from Shanghai — and the easiest to ruin by doing it badly.
Hangzhou: one day around the West Lake
A lake, hills with tea terraces, and a thousand years of poets writing about both. Worth a day, better worth two.
Zhujiajiao: the water town, honestly
Canals, stone bridges and a thousand tour groups. It is worth going — specifically on a weekday morning, or on the two streets nobody walks down.
Qibao: the water town inside Shanghai
Still inside the municipality, half an hour closer than Zhujiajiao, and much less written about. Worth a couple of hours.
Chongming Island: nothing much, deliberately
A big flat island of wetlands, farms and bird reserves at the mouth of the Yangtze. Go when you want Shanghai to stop.
How to buy Chinese high-speed rail tickets
The mechanics of booking trains in China with a foreign passport and a foreign card. Simpler than it looks, once you know the four things that trip people up.
The best two days out of Shanghai
If you have exactly two spare days, this is the allocation that gets you the most without turning either into a blur.
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