Municipality · East China
Shanghai
上海
Treaty port turned financial capital at the mouth of the Yangtze
Shanghai is a municipality directly under the central government on the Yangtze River Delta, China's largest city by resident population and its main financial and commercial centre. A county town until the Opium War, it grew after 1843 into the treaty port whose Bund, lane houses and department stores defined modern Chinese urban life, and since the 1990s the Pudong New Area has made it a global port and finance hub.
Key facts
Profile
- Chinese name
- 上海
- Abbreviation (简称)
- 沪 or 申
- Type
- Municipality
- Region
- East China
- Seat of government
- Huangpu District (seat of the municipal government)
- Area
- about 6,340 km²
- Divisions
- 16 districts
- Ethnic groups
- Han, Hui, Manchu, Zhuang, Tujia
- Languages
- Shanghainese, Standard Mandarin, Chongming dialect
Languages
Shanghainese
上海话
A Northern Wu dialect formed in the late nineteenth century from the speech of the old county town, Ningbo and Suzhou; not intelligible to Mandarin speakers and today used mainly among older residents.
Standard Mandarin
普通话
The everyday language of a city in which a large share of residents were born elsewhere in China.
Chongming dialect
崇明话
Wu variety of Chongming Island, closer to the speech of Qidong and Haimen across the channel in Jiangsu.
Name and abbreviation
The name, “on the sea” or “upper sea”, comes from the Shanghai Pu (上海浦), one of the creeks that drained into the Wusong River in the Song dynasty; the settlement beside it became a market town and in 1292 the seat of Shanghai county. The abbreviation 沪 recalls the 扈 (hù), bamboo fish traps used by fishermen on the lower Wusong, which gave that stretch of river the name Hudu (沪渎). The second abbreviation 申 refers to Lord Chunshen (春申君), the Warring States minister of Chu said to have held the area as his fief; the Huangpu River is also called the Chunshen River after him.
Historic names
沪渎
Old name of the lower Wusong River and the fishing coast around it, source of the abbreviation 沪.
华亭
County founded in 751 in today's Songjiang, the administrative centre of the area before Shanghai county was separated from it.
松江府
Ming and Qing prefecture to which Shanghai county belonged; Songjiang was the older and grander city until the nineteenth century.
魔都
“magic city”
Modern nickname, taken from the Japanese writer Muramatsu Shōfū's 1924 book about the city.
Land and climate
Shanghai lies on the flat alluvial plain where the Yangtze reaches the East China Sea, with an average elevation of only a few metres. The Huangpu River divides the old city (Puxi) from Pudong to the east, and the municipality also includes Chongming, Changxing and Hengsha islands in the Yangtze estuary. The only hills are a handful of low outcrops in Songjiang in the south-west, and the coast is lined with tidal flats and reclaimed land.
Landforms
Yangtze River Delta
长江三角洲
The low, water-laced plain shared with southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang.
Chongming Island
崇明岛
Built up from Yangtze sediment since the seventh century; one of the largest alluvial islands in the world, with wetland reserves at Dongtan.
Sheshan
佘山
Low hills in Songjiang with a basilica and the historic Jesuit observatory.
Jiuduansha shoals
九段沙
Young sandbanks at the river mouth, protected as a wetland reserve.
Rivers and lakes
Yangtze River
长江
Enters the sea along the municipality's northern edge; the estuary is Shanghai's main source of drinking water.
Huangpu River
黄浦江
Rises in Dianshan Lake and flows through the city to the Yangtze at Wusongkou; the Bund lines its western bank.
Suzhou Creek
苏州河
The lower Wusong River, which winds through the northern districts to join the Huangpu by the Garden Bridge.
Dianshan Lake
淀山湖
Largest freshwater lake in the municipality, on the border with Kunshan in Jiangsu.
Climate
Shanghai has a humid subtropical climate with four distinct seasons. Summers are hot and humid; the plum rains (梅雨, méiyǔ) of June and early July bring weeks of damp, and typhoons can arrive between July and September. Winters are short, grey and damp, with occasional frost and rare snow. Spring and autumn, especially April–May and October–November, are the most comfortable times.
History
The area was a fishing and salt-making coast that gradually rose from the sea. Its trade grew in the Song dynasty, a county was established in 1292, and by the Ming the region was the centre of China's cotton-cloth industry; the town walls were built in 1553 against pirate raids. After the Opium War the Treaty of Nanjing opened Shanghai to foreign trade in 1843, and British, American and French settlements grew into the International Settlement and the French Concession. By the 1930s it was the largest city in East Asia and the centre of Chinese finance, publishing, film and industry, as well as the place where the Communist Party was founded. After a period of relative neglect under the planned economy, the opening of Pudong in 1990 returned it to the role of China's commercial capital.
751
Huating county established
The first county in the area, centred on today's Songjiang, which remained the administrative heart of the region for centuries.
1292
Shanghai county created
The Yuan dynasty raised the market town on the Shanghai Pu to a county seat, the origin of the city's name and administrative identity.
1553
City walls built
The walls, raised against Japanese and Chinese pirates (倭寇), enclosed the old county town until they were demolished in 1912; their line survives in the ring of Renmin Road and Zhonghua Road.
1843
Opened as a treaty port
Under the Treaty of Nanjing Shanghai became one of five ports opened to foreign trade; the British settlement was laid out north of the walled town in 1845.
1853–1855
Small Swords uprising
Rebels held the walled city; refugees poured into the foreign settlements, which took control of their own customs and municipal government.
1863
International Settlement formed
The British and American settlements merged under the Shanghai Municipal Council; the French Concession remained separate.
July 1921
First National Congress of the Communist Party of China
Delegates met in a house in the French Concession, now a memorial museum in Xintiandi.
1932 and 1937
Battles of Shanghai
Japanese attacks in 1932 and the three-month battle of 1937 devastated Zhabei and other districts; the foreign settlements remained an enclave until December 1941.
1990
Pudong opened for development
The central government designated the farmland east of the Huangpu as a development zone, leading to Lujiazui's financial district and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which opened the same year.
2010
Expo 2010
The World Expo on both banks of the Huangpu accelerated a large expansion of the metro and the renewal of the riverfront.
2013
First pilot free trade zone
Shanghai hosted the first of China's pilot free trade zones; the Lingang area was added in 2019.
World heritage
Culture
Shanghai culture — 海派 (hǎipài), the “Shanghai style” — grew from the meeting of Jiangnan traditions with the treaty port's foreign presence and its migrants from across China. It produced China's first modern film industry, its publishing houses, jazz-age dance halls and a school of painting, and it gave the city a reputation for commerce, fashion and a certain urban reserve. Everyday life still centres on the lane neighbourhoods (弄堂) of shikumen houses, parks and a strong café and theatre scene.
Opera, music and dance
Shanghai opera (Huju)
沪剧
Local opera sung in Shanghainese, developed from folk songs of the Huangpu area and known for plays set in modern urban life.
Yue opera
越剧
Originating in Shengzhou, Zhejiang, this all-female opera matured in Shanghai's theatres in the 1940s; the Shanghai Yue Opera House remains a leading company.
Pingtan storytelling
评弹
Suzhou-style storytelling and ballad singing to sanxian and pipa, performed in Shanghai's teahouses and story halls.
Huajixi comic theatre
滑稽戏
Farce in Shanghainese and other dialects, which grew out of 1920s radio and stage comedy.
Crafts
Gu embroidery
顾绣
Embroidery that imitates painting, developed by women of the Gu family of Songjiang in the late Ming dynasty.
Shanghai-style qipao
海派旗袍
The fitted qipao took its modern form in Shanghai's tailoring shops in the 1920s and 1930s.
Jiading bamboo carving
嘉定竹刻
Deep relief carving on brush pots and wrist rests, practised in Jiading since the sixteenth century.
Festivals and customs
Shikumen lane life
石库门
Terraces of stone-framed gateway houses built from the 1870s, arranged along lanes where neighbours cooked, washed and talked in shared space.
Yuyuan lantern fair
豫园灯会
Lantern displays around the Yu Garden and City God Temple at Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival.
Longhua temple fair
龙华庙会
Spring fair at Longhua Temple, the city's oldest Buddhist monastery, at peach-blossom time.
Cuisine
Shanghai's own cooking, 本帮菜 (běnbāng cài, “local-gang cuisine”), belongs to the wider Jiangnan tradition: red-braising in soy sauce and sugar, rich “thick oil and red sauce” (浓油赤酱) flavours, river fish, crab and seasonal greens. It is served alongside the city's many migrant cuisines — Ningbo, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Cantonese — and a long-established Western-style café culture known as 海派西餐.
Signature dishes
Xiaolongbao
小笼包
Small steamed buns filled with pork and jellied stock that turns to soup; Nanxiang in Jiading claims their origin.
Shengjian bao
生煎包
Pan-fried pork buns with crisp bottoms, sprinkled with sesame and spring onion — the classic breakfast.
Red-braised pork
红烧肉
Pork belly braised in soy sauce, rice wine and rock sugar until glossy, the benchmark of benbang cooking.
Oil-exploded river shrimp
油爆虾
Freshwater shrimp flash-fried and glazed with a sweet soy sauce.
Yanduxian
腌笃鲜
Spring soup of fresh and salted pork with bamboo shoots.
Scallion-oil noodles
葱油拌面
Noodles tossed with soy sauce and oil fried with spring onion until dark and fragrant.
Specialities
Hairy crab
大闸蟹
Chinese mitten crab from the lakes of the delta, eaten steamed in autumn with ginger and vinegar.
Five-spice beans
五香豆
Broad beans cooked with spices and sugar, a traditional City God Temple snack.
Chongming rice cake
崇明糕
Steamed glutinous rice cake with nuts and dried fruit from Chongming Island.
Fengjing pork hock
枫泾丁蹄
Braised pork hock from the canal town of Fengjing in Jinshan.
Notable people
Xu Guangqi (1562–1633)
徐光启
Ming scholar-official, agronomist and Catholic convert who translated Euclid with Matteo Ricci; Xujiahui is named after his family.
Huang Daopo (c. 1245–1330)
黄道婆
Weaver from Wunijing (today's Xuhui) credited with bringing cotton-processing techniques from Hainan, the basis of the region's textile wealth.
Soong Ching-ling (1893–1981)
宋庆龄
Born in Shanghai; wife of Sun Yat-sen and later honorary president of the People's Republic.
Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang) (1920–1995)
张爱玲
Novelist born in Shanghai whose stories of the 1940s city made her one of the most read modern Chinese writers.
Lu Xun (1881–1936)
鲁迅
Born in Shaoxing, he spent his last decade in Shanghai's Hongkou district, where his home and tomb are kept.
Yao Ming (born 1980)
姚明
Basketball player born in Shanghai who played for the Houston Rockets.
Economy
Shanghai is China's leading centre of finance, trade and shipping. It hosts the Shanghai Stock Exchange, futures and gold exchanges and the regional headquarters of many foreign companies, and its port, spread across the Yangtze estuary and the deep-water Yangshan terminals, has been the world's busiest container port by throughput for more than a decade. Manufacturing remains substantial — cars, integrated circuits, biomedicine, steel, petrochemicals and shipbuilding — and the city is the core of the integrated Yangtze River Delta economy.
Main industries
- Financial services, securities, futures and insurance
- Shipping, port logistics and trade
- Automotive manufacturing, including electric vehicles
- Integrated circuits and semiconductor equipment
- Biomedicine and medical devices
- Civil aircraft (the C919 is assembled in Pudong)
- Steel, petrochemicals and shipbuilding
Zones, ports and hubs
Pudong New Area
浦东新区
China's first national-level new area (1992), with the Lujiazui finance district, Zhangjiang Science City and the main international airport.
China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone
中国（上海）自由贸易试验区
The first pilot free trade zone in the country (2013), extended in 2019 by the Lingang New Area near Yangshan port.
Yangshan Deep-Water Port
洋山深水港
Container terminals on islands in Hangzhou Bay, linked to the mainland by the Donghai Bridge.
Hongqiao International Central Business District
虹桥国际中央商务区
Business district around the Hongqiao transport hub in the west, home of the China International Import Expo.
Getting there
- Pudong International Airport handles most intercontinental flights; Hongqiao International in the west serves mainly domestic and regional routes.
- Hongqiao Railway Station is the main terminus for high-speed trains to Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou and the south; Shanghai Station and Shanghai South serve other lines.
- The Maglev line links Pudong Airport with Longyang Road metro station; the metro reaches both airports.
- International cruise ships dock at Wusongkou and at the North Bund terminal; ferries serve Chongming Island.
Travel guide: shanghai
Entry rules for foreign visitors are on the visa and entry pages.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
- Shanghai Municipal People's Government — Shanghai Municipal People's Government (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- 2025年上海市国民经济和社会发展统计公报 (Statistical Communiqué of Shanghai on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development) — Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Statistics (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Seventh National Population Census communiqués — National Bureau of Statistics of China (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Shanghai — Encyclopaedia Britannica (retrieved 27 September 2026)
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