Shanghai: Old Street, Jade Buddha Temple & Bund Private Day Tour

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.86 (7 reviews)

Free cancellation

1/9

Duration8h

GroupPrivate

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

Seven Shanghai landmarks in one day, with a guide who knows the city's layers

You get picked up from your hotel and spend the day moving through Shanghai's old and new—the Ming garden, the French Concession, the Jade Buddha Temple, the Bund, and Pudong's skyline—with a senior English-speaking guide who explains the city's history and architecture as you go. Lunch at an authentic local restaurant is included, and because it's a private tour, the pace stays flexible around what interests you.

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Shanghai's key sights

Visit Yu Yuan Garden and Old Street
Rest at ancient Chinese tea house
Drive to People Square and see City Hall
Optional visit to Shanghai Museum
Stroll along Xintiandi in French Concession
Visit Jade Buddha Temple
Walk along the Bund waterfront
Drive to Pudong Financial Center
See Shanghai Tower and Jinmao Tower

The Experience

The car pulls up to your hotel in the morning, and you step out into Shanghai's rhythm—the guide waiting with a bottle of water, ready to move through the day at your pace. This is a private tour, which means no rushing to match a group's schedule, no waiting for stragglers at the gate. You start at Yu Garden, the Ming dynasty garden that sits in the middle of the old city like a secret, its walls and pavilions arranged so tightly that you feel the centuries compressed into a few acres. The guide walks you through the logic of it—how the rocks are placed, why the water moves the way it does—and then you slip into an old tea house for a real pause, not a photo stop.

After tea, the car takes you to People Square to see the City Hall and its surrounding buildings from street level, and if museums interest you, the Shanghai Museum is right there. Then comes the Former French Concession at Xintiandi, where the architecture shifts—tree-lined streets, converted shikumen buildings, the texture of Shanghai's colonial past made into a place people actually want to walk through. Your guide talks about how the city layers itself, how different eras sit next to each other without erasing one another. The Jade Buddha Temple comes in the afternoon, a 19th-century structure where you see the one-piece jade Buddha that gives the place its name, and the guide explains what the temple means to people who live here, not just what it looks like in photographs.

The Bund is next—the waterfront that Shanghai built its reputation on, the skyline rising on both sides of the Huangpu River. You stand there and see what the guide means about layers: the old colonial buildings facing the water, and across it, Pudong's towers climbing up. The final stop is Pudong itself, the financial center where Shanghai Tower (the tallest building in the city), the Jinmao Tower, and the "Bottle Opener" (that's what people call it) cluster together like a argument about what modern looks like. Lunch happens somewhere in the middle of all this—a local Chinese restaurant where the food tastes like Shanghai, not like what tourists expect Shanghai to taste like.

What’s included

Hotel or port pickup and drop-off.
private English-speaking senior guide.
entry to Yu Garden, Jade Buddha Temple, and all other attractions.
authentic Chinese lunch at a local restaurant.
bottled water throughout the day.

Operated by Shanghai Driver Guide

Is this one for you?Book this if you're new to Shanghai and want to see both the old city and the modern skyline in one day without arranging transport, tickets, or timing yourself—the private format means you move at your own pace, and the guide handles the navigation and context.