Shanghai,is situated on the estuary of Yangtze River of China. It is the largest industrial city in China, covering an area of 5,800 square kilometers (2,239 square miles), with a population of 18.7 million.

Originally, Shanghai was a seaside fishing village and in time its gradual development led to it being granted County status on August 19th, 1291 during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Hence this day became the anniversary of the founding of Shanghai. Today's Shanghai is a multi-cultural metropolis with both modern and traditional Chinese features. Serving as the largest base of Chinese industrial technology, the important seaport and China's largest commercial and financial center, shanghai draws the attention of the whole world.

The Bund (means the Embankment) refers to Shanghai's famous waterfront running along the west shore of the Huangpu River, forming the eastern boundary of old downtown Shanghai. Once a muddy towpath for boats along the river, the Bund was where the foreign powers that entered Shanghai after the Opium War of 1842 erected their distinct Western-style banks and trading houses. From here Shanghai grew into a cosmopolitan and thriving commercial and financial center, Asia's leading city in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the awesome colonial structures you see today date from that prosperous time and have become an indelible part of Shanghai's cityscape. Today, a wide avenue fronts the old buildings while a raised promenade on the east side of the road affords visitors pleasant strolls along the river and marvelous views of both the Bund and Pudong across the river. Pudong's new skyscrapers and modern towers -- constituting Shanghai's "21st Century Bund" -- may dominate today's skyline, but the city's core identity and history are strictly rooted in this unique strip on the western shore. For years, the Bund was the first sight of Shanghai for those arriving by boat; it should be your first stop as well.

Jade Buddha Temple

Though an active Buddhist monastery today (devoted to the Chan or Zen sect, which originated in China), the real emphasis at this temple, Shanghai's most popular with visitors, is squarely on tourism. What the busloads come for are the temple's two gorgeous white jade Buddhas, each carved from an individual slab of Burmese jade and brought to Shanghai in 1881 by the monk Huigeng, who was on his way back from Burma to his hometown on nearby Putuo Shan (Putuo Island). A temple was built in 1882 to house the statues, but was destroyed in a fire and rebuilt at the present site in 1918 with swirling eaves characteristic of the Song Dynasty architectural style. Northeast of the main Daxiong Bao Dian (Treasure Hall of the Great Hero), which contains golden images of the Buddhas of the past, present, and future, the Cangjing Lou houses the first of the two treasures: a lustrous, beatific, seated Buddha weighing 205 kilograms (455 lb.), measuring 1.9m (6 ft. 5 in.), and adorned with jewels and stones. The other Buddha is found northwest of the main hall in the Wofo Si, where a less impressive but still beautiful 1m-long (3 ft. 4 in.) sleeping Buddha reclines, his peaceful expression signaling his impending entry into nirvana. Opposite it is a much larger, coarser replica donated by the Singapore Buddhist Friendship Association in 1988.

Yu Yuan is located at the heart of Old Town (Nanshi), a few blocks southwest of the Bund in downtown Shanghai. Yu Yuan is a pleasant well-contained classical Chinese garden. Bearing the burden of being the most complete classical garden in urban Shanghai and therefore a must-see for every tourist, this overexposed garden overflows daily with hordes of visitors. Built between 1559 and 1577 by local official Pan Yunduan as the private estate for his father, Yu Yuan (meaning Garden of Peace and Comfort) is a maze of Ming Dynasty pavilions, elaborate rockeries, arched bridges, and goldfish ponds, all encircled by an undulating dragon wall. Occupying just 2 hectares (5 acres), it nevertheless appears quite expansive, with room for 30 pavilions. The layout of Yu Yuan, which contains several gardens-within-gardens, can make strolling here a bit confusing, but if you stick to a general clockwise path from the main entrance, you should get around most of the estate and arrive eventually at the Inner Garden (Nei Yuan) and final exit.

Shanghai Museum. Frequently cited as the best museum in China, the Shanghai Museum has 11 state-of-the-art galleries and three special exhibition halls arranged on four floors, all encircling a spacious cylindrical atrium. The exhibits are tastefully displayed and well lit, and explanatory signs are in English as well as Chinese. For size, the museum's 120,000 historic artifacts cannot match the world-renowned Chinese collections in Beijing, Taipei, and Xi'an, but are more than enough to fill the galleries on any given day with outstanding treasures. Many foreign visitors to the museum often rank it as Shanghai's very best site.

Huangpu River Cruise. The Huangpu River (Huangpu Jiang) is the city's shipping artery both to the East China Sea and to the mouth of the Yangzi River, which the Huangpu joins 29km (18 miles) north of downtown Shanghai. It has also become a demarcating line between two Shanghais, east and west, past and future. On its western shore, the colonial landmarks of the Bund serve as a reminder of Shanghai's 19th-century struggle to reclaim a waterfront from the bogs of this river (which originates in nearby Dianshan Hu or Lake Dianshan); on the eastern shore, the steel and glass skyscrapers of the Pudong New Area point to a burgeoning financial empire of the future. The Huangpu's wharves are the most fascinating in China. The port handles the cargo coming out of the interior from Nanjing, Wuhan, and other Yangzi River ports, including Chongqing, 2,415km (1,500 miles) deep into Sichuan Province. From Shanghai, which produces plenty of industrial and commercial products in its own right, as much as a third of China's trade with the rest of the world is conducted each year. A boat ride on the Huangpu is highly recommended: Not only does it provide unrivalled postcard views of Shanghai past and future, it'll afford you a closer look at this dynamic waterway that makes Shanghai flow.

Oriental Pearl TV Tower. The earliest symbol of the new China, this hideous gray tower with three tapering levels of pink spheres (meant to resemble pearls) still holds a special place in many a local heart and is still one of the first stops in town for Chinese visitors. Built in 1994 at a height of 468m (1,550 ft.), it is hailed as the tallest TV tower in Asia and the third tallest in the world. Visit for the stunning panoramas of Shanghai (when the clouds and smog decide to cooperate) and the stellar Shanghai Municipal History Museum located in the basement. Various combination tickets are offered for tower and museum, but for most folks, the observation deck in the middle sphere (263m/870 ft. elevation), reached by high-speed elevators staffed by statistics-reciting attendants, is just the right height to take in Shanghai old and new, east and west. Those partial to vertiginous views can ascend to the "space capsule" in the top sphere (350m/1,092 ft. elevation).

Shanghai Maglev Train. Known as the Maglev (magnetic levitation) train, China's flagship transport system takes 7 minutes and 20 seconds to hurtle the 30 kilometers from Shanghai airport to the city's outskirts -- a journey which takes up to an hour by car. This is the first Maglev train running for business in the world. The highest speed is 431 km/h.