Summer 2025 in Shanghai: the Pudong skyline from a Suzhou Creek bridge, and a shopping crawl down the Nanjing Road pedestrian street.
We spent a stretch of summer 2025 in Shanghai, long enough to stop rushing and just live in it. The city does the contrast trick better than anywhere: colonial-era stone on one bank, a science-fiction skyline on the other, and everyone in between getting on with their day.
On a Suzhou Creek bridge in July 2025, dragon t-shirts out, the Oriental Pearl Tower photobombing as usual.Nanjing Road claimed its victims. The bags were heavier by the hour.
Between the skyline and the shopping there were noodle counters, metro rides and a lot of iced tea. Shanghai in summer is hot, loud and completely worth it.
Yu Garden and old Shanghai
The old town got both ends of the trip: the bazaar in July, the Ming-era garden behind it in August, plus one statue we never expected to meet.
The Yuyuan bazaar in July 2025. Every roofline is showing off and every shop underneath sells something you suddenly need.Inside Yu Garden proper, where the carpentry does not have a single plain surface.August 2025 in the garden: corridor shade, Taihu rocks, and a pond the colour of jade.An unexpected find in a city park: Umeya Shokichi, the Nagasaki entrepreneur who backed Sun Yat-sen, sitting quietly among the shrubs.
