The Best Places to Drink and Stay in East Da Pu Qiao

A curvy tower in Xintiandi that leans into contradictions, the Andaz is a boutique-feeling hotel inside a 28-story Hyatt property, where the rooms run red and rich hardwood, LED lighting shifts to suit your mood, and an iPad controls everything from the shades to room service. The French patisserie and modern Shanghainese restaurant give you reasons to stay in. Shopping and the Metro are a short walk out the door.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The lobby announces itself with a spritz of ginger flower scent, which you can buy bottled at the gift shop if you fall hard enough. The Langham is a 357-room luxury hotel sitting directly across from Xintiandi's cobbled shikumen lanes, with a three-story chandelier that sets expectations the guest rooms wisely dial back, trading drama for lacquered wood and modern Chinese calm. Club floors come with round-the-clock butlers, and the Chuan Spa handles the rest.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 #85 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars

A cocktail bar that doubles as a scavenger hunt: find Tipsy, the secret bar hidden somewhere in the building, and you've earned bragging rights for the evening. Sober Company runs three floors of drinking and eating, but Sober Society is the heart of it, where the team behind Speak Low works through a menu of cocktails built around Chinese ingredients. It has landed on Asia's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

1. The 50 #81 · Asia’s 50 Best Bars
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

You enter through a sliding bookshelf inside a cocktail equipment shop, which sets the tone nicely. This three-floor cocktail bar from Shingo Gokan has long since shed any real secrecy, but the ritual of getting in still earns its keep. The second floor is where the serious drinking happens; the top floor, rare whiskies and a members-only door. The crowd knows what it ordered before it sits down.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The name sets expectations that the address quietly overturns: this InterContinental is not a tower above the skyline but a century-old estate, gardens and all, that once served as the State Guest House. European-style buildings sit amid parkland that most Shanghai hotels would trade their infinity pools for. The rooms and spa are as polished as any in the chain; guests just happen to fall asleep somewhere that feels nothing like a hotel.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A cocktail bar on Nanchang Road where the design philosophy comes from Virgil Abloh's 3% rule: change an existing thing by just that much and it becomes something new. The shelves hold a select few bottles, the lighting is considered, and nothing extra survives the edit. The drinks menu is equally spare, which either feels like restraint or curation depending on your mood, but the room makes a strong argument for less.

1. The 50 The 50 Discovery