10 Jaw-Dropping Views of Shanghai You Need to See to Believe!
The Invisible Resident’s Guide to the Shanghai Skyline
I’ve been living out of a carry-on suitcase in Shanghai for six months now. Not in the “five-star hotel overlooking the Bund” kind of way, but in the “renting a lane house room with a leaky faucet and a neighbor who practices Peking Opera at 6 AM” kind of way. If you want the postcard version of this city, go buy a postcard. But if you want to understand why this vertical labyrinth makes your heart race, you have to stop looking at the buildings and start looking through them.
Most travelers make the mistake of standing on the Bund (the riverfront) and staring at the Lujiazui towers. It’s a classic view, sure, but it’s the view of a spectator. To see the city, you have to disappear into it. You have to find the spots where the glass skyscrapers reflect the laundry hanging from bamboo poles in the alleys below. That’s the real jaw-dropper: the friction between the future and the dirt.
1. The Abandoned Rooftop in Zhabei (Jing’an North)
Zhabei used to be the gritty cousin of the shiny Jing’an district. It’s been officially absorbed now, but the soul hasn’t changed. There’s a specific residential compound near the Hanzhong Road metro station—I won’t give you the building number because half the fun is dodging the bao’an (security guard)—where the rooftop access is perpetually “locked” with a piece of wire.
From here, you don’t just see the Pearl Tower; you see the pulsing veins of the city’s rail system. The trains snake into Shanghai Railway Station like glowing worms. It’s loud, it smells like ozone and fried scallions from the street stalls below, and it is magnificent.
