Green Shanghai: Parks, Gardens and Easy Escapes

Shanghai's reputation is vertical, which does the city a disservice. At street level it is one of the leafiest metropolises in Asia — plane trees planted a century ago in the concessions, a classical Ming garden in the middle of the old town, and a riverside park system that has quietly reclaimed kilometres of former docks.

Key facts

• Best months: late March to May for blossom and wisteria; October and November for the cleanest light.
• Mornings belong to the parks. Tai chi, ballroom dancing, choirs and badminton all start early and are free to watch.
• Metro reaches nearly all of these, including the water towns on the outer lines.
• Most city parks are free; the classical gardens charge a modest entry fee.

In the old town

Yu Garden is the essential one: a Ming-dynasty scholar's garden of rockeries, carp ponds, dragon-topped walls and zigzag bridges, laid out so that no view resolves all at once. It is small and it is busy, so go at opening. The teahouse on the pond outside is one of the most photographed buildings in the city.

In the former French Concession

Fuxing Park is the neighbourhood's living room — formal French parterres, plane trees, and a morning programme of dancing and card games that has been running for decades. Jing'an Sculpture Park, further north beside the temple, does the same job in a more contemporary register.

Between them, simply walking is the attraction. The concession streets are tunnels of plane trees, and Wukang Road, Anfu Road and their neighbours are best appreciated at walking pace.

By the water

The West Bund has become Shanghai's best long walk: a riverside strip in Xuhui where cranes and cement silos were converted into art museums and running paths. On the other side, Century Park in Pudong is the largest park in the inner city, big enough to rent a boat on, and pleasantly under-visited on weekdays.

For something smaller, the Suzhou Creek walkway now runs almost continuously through the centre, past converted warehouses and old iron bridges.

Serious gardens

Chenshan Botanical Garden, out towards Songjiang, is the big one — vast, well designed, and built partly inside a former quarry. Gucun Park in the north draws crowds each spring for cherry blossom, and Shanghai Botanical Garden keeps a renowned collection of penjing, the miniature landscape trees that gave bonsai its origins.

Easy escapes

Zhujiajiao, a canal town of stone bridges and waterside lanes, is reachable on the metro and makes a straightforward half-day. Sheshan offers a hill, a forest and a basilica, which counts as mountaineering by Shanghai standards. And with high-speed rail putting Suzhou around half an hour away, the classical gardens that Yu Garden gestures towards are an easy day trip.

Tip: Get to a park before eight on a weekday morning. The music, the dancing and the sword forms are the most genuinely Shanghainese thing you can watch, and they are over by nine.