North Bund and Tilanqiao

Hongkou's 3.4 km of river-and-creek waterfront, linked up in 2021 and reviewed as continuous in May 2025: a free promenade that faces the Lujiazui towers head-on and shows the Bund line to the west — usually calmer than the Bund itself, though big events fill it. The World Reception Hall on the former Yangtze Wharf is a conference venue; since 10 January 2026 it runs bookable individual visits (WeChat mini-program, next week's sessions released on Fridays), and its former free open days now follow the annual state-enterprise open-day programme.

The 1927 Ohel Moshe Synagogue and the museum of over 4,000 m² built around it in 2020. It tells how some 20,000 Jewish refugees from Europe reached Shanghai and how, from February 1943, the 'stateless refugees' were confined to a designated area of Hongkou — with a wall of 18,578 researched names. For European and North American visitors this is the most personally connected museum in the city, and one of the easiest to visit: a real official website in English, posted holiday hours, an on-site ticket desk that accepts passports, and a ¥20 ticket.

Two road bridges over the mouth of Suzhou Creek, about 200 m apart, and the city's favourite free skyline viewpoint: from Zhapu Rd Bridge you look east along the creek to the Bund's rooflines with the Pudong towers stacked behind them; turn west and the Post Office clock tower fills the frame. A July 2024 sunrise reportedly drew hundreds; dusk to lights-on is the easier shot. Public bridges, no ticket.

The Municipal Council's 1933 slaughterhouse beside Hongkou Creek — a concrete labyrinth of umbrella columns, spiral ramps and some 26 connected sloping bridges, designed by the British architect Balfours. Reborn in 2007 as a creative-industry park and listed as a national monument in 2019; there is no admission ticket for the open park (events and halls charge their own), and the two official opening-hour figures disagree (8:30-20:30 or 9:00-22:00) — go by day. Inland, by Hailun Rd station.

Victor Sassoon's S-shaped apartment block along the north bank of Suzhou Creek, designed by Palmer & Turner and finished in the early 1930s (official sources give both 1932 and 1935) as the largest apartment house in Shanghai. In 1938 it took in European Jewish refugees as a reception centre. Today it is an ordinary residential building of several hundred households, with a community 'reception room' used for organised visits (official sources place it on the 2nd floor; press reports describe the old basement pool) — look from the creek side and the lobby doors; do not wander the residential floors.

Built 1901-03 as the Shanghai Municipal Gaol and long nicknamed 'the largest prison in the Far East', it was the site of the first post-war trials of Japanese war criminals held on Chinese soil in 1946, and has been a national protected monument since 2013. The prison completed its move to a new complex in Qingpu on 22 May 2024 (Ministry of Justice); the 60-mu compound of cell blocks built 1917-35 on Changyang Road has no public admission, and a culture-led reuse has been proposed since 2013 without an approved plan. You can walk its walls and see the gate; you cannot go in.

The downtown cruise terminal on the North Bund — three large berths on about 1.2 km of quay, and for many visitors on a port call the first square metre of Shanghai they stand on. The passenger halls sit inside a controlled port zone (border-inspection hall to the gangways, sealed off under a June 2026 notice); the waterfront platform between Taiping Rd and Gaoyang Rd was opened to the public in 2021 and puts you at water level opposite Lujiazui — current hours are the operator's call on the day.

The 1924 General Post Office on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, still a working postal building with a museum on the second floor — free, no booking, and one of the few 1920s interiors in the city you can simply walk into. Since 1 August 2025 it opens Tuesday to Sunday (China Post notice); older guides and listings still show the four-day schedule. Rooftop garden and clock tower access is unconfirmed — do not count on it.

The Hongkou blocks where, from February 1943, Shanghai's 'stateless refugees' were confined: Huoshan Park with the 1994 memorial stone (118 Huoshan Rd, open round the clock), the late-1920s terraces of Zhoushan Road nicknamed 'Little Vienna', the former Joint Distribution Committee office at 119-121 Huoshan Rd, and the White Horse Café — a 1939 refugee café rebuilt one-to-one in 2015 and reopened in September 2025. Still a lived-in neighbourhood; a half-hour walking loop starts at the museum door.

Why is the city called Shanghai? Because of two creeks: in Song and Yuan times the Shanghai Creek (上海浦) and the neighbouring Xiahai Creek (下海浦) ran into the Wusong River. The first gave its name to the town, the second silted up under the Qing and left this small temple, founded by fishing families in the Qianlong era as a shrine to a sea deity and rebuilt in 1941. A working Buddhist temple with real incense, a few minutes from the Jewish quarter — the place where the other half of the city's name survives.