Seven Portraits of Shanghai
In a vibrant city of 24.1 million locals, 60 percent of Airbnb hosts are women. Meet some of them — and one supercool sidekick.
Words by Christopher St. Cavish
Photographs by Jeremy Liebman
Abby Gong: The Foodie
The Shanghai native, 37, a married mom of a 3-year-old daughter, hosts and leads a pastry-making experience in the Songjiang district.
My most memorable guests are a French couple who come to Shanghai for work and are always really busy. I didn’t get to meet them the first time they stayed. When they checked out, I found they’d left a gift bottle of red wine. I was really touched. So the second time they stayed, I gave them a bottle of my father-in-law’s homemade red wine. Since then, we’ve been exchanging wine reviews and tips about making wine.
I’m a born foodie. But after eating at so many restaurants, I got sick of them, and I wanted to cook my own food. I started with Western desserts, but they use so much sugar and butter. Learning to make Chinese pastries turned out to be much harder. I searched all over the Internet, asked other cooks, and looked for cooking apps, but nothing was really right. Eventually, someone told me the city government has a training program for Chinese pastry. Even at the basic level, they require you to attend 500 sessions. So I signed up and did 600 sessions, the medium level.
I make my family breakfast every morning, and I like to give the pastries to my Airbnb guests. Some are seasonal, such as qing tuan, made around the Qingming Festival in early spring, and some you have to eat fresh, like steamed custard buns.
If my guests wanted recommendations, I’d send them to Suzhou to experience life on the canals or to Fengjing, an ancient water town in the Jinshan district.
In Shanghai, I would suggest these pastry spots:
Lu Feng Ge: A traditional Cantonese-style restaurant, it has dim sum, like steamed buns filled with a sweet egg custard. But I always order the roast pigeon.
Sunflour (Anfu Lu): Sunflour sells affordable but good-quality Western-style breads. I come for the French country bread.
Nanjing Da Pai Dang: This is a themed restaurant, based around Imperial China times, and it’s decorated in a very old style. I come for the traditional la gao, a barely sweetened Shanghainese-style cake made with sticky rice and flavored with osmanthus flowers.
Tang Gong: This Cantonese restaurant is the best for old- fashioned xia jiao, or steamed prawn dumplings: just prawns and a thin steamed wrapper that’s almost translucent.
Da Hu Chun: There are several kinds of shengjian bao, a pan-fried baozi stuffed with pork. Some are fluffy, and some are not fluffy at all. Da Hu Chun, which is almost 100 years old, has baozi in between the fluffy and flat styles, and their filling is known for not having much juice. Instead, you order curry beef soup on the side.
Wynne Wang: The Cool Mom
The Zhejiang-born 36-year-old is a full-time mother of two young sons. She hosts in the Former French Concession.
If I only had one day in Shanghai, I’d go to Pure Yoga, a fancy yoga studio right near my listing. Then I’d rent a Mobike [a bike-share brand]. It’s pretty fun to cycle in the city. I’d go through the Former French Concession but make sure to download Baidu Maps [in Chinese only] in case I needed to make a detour — not all of the streets permit cycling.
After that, I’d go for a massage — they are fairly priced in the city. And I’d stop at Haosheng Jiujia, a restaurant in Xujiahui that does Shanghainese food. There’s no menu. You have to show up early and ask what they have that day, and they’ll help you pick dishes.
There are lots of good spots for kids:
Elefante: It’s a hip Spanish restaurant in the Former French Concession. The food is kid-friendly.
Paulaner Bräuhaus: The famous German brewery chain has a location on the Huangpu River in Pudong overlooking the old buildings of the Bund, with a really big playground.
Shanghai Natural History Museum: Huge dinosaurs!
Shanghai Children’s Art Theater: Asia’s largest children’s theater, with all kinds of plays from Chinese opera to international touring children’s shows.
Little Socium: It’s a playground where kids get to act out roles as firefighters, mechanics, police, bakers, and more.
Little Bugz: The indoor play areas are surrounded by tables, so you can order coffee and watch your kids play.
Rhonda Pan: The Cocktail Queen
The single Shanghai native, 30, hosts in the Hongkou area and leads a mixology experience.
Most of my guests are Chinese. People from North America or Europe, they know Xintiandi and the Former French Concession, but they don’t know Hongkou, which is too bad. This district has former residences of writers and actors — Lu Xun, China’s famous 20th-century writer, lived on the same street as my listings. A lot of shikumen [lane] houses still survive. I love to travel, and I want to walk around neighborhoods that are not tourist sites to see how real people live. That’s what Hongkou is.
After I quit my job as an executive assistant at an American company, a friend persuaded me to take a bartending course. I didn’t realize how difficult it is to mix two different spirits together, use ice correctly, and how to do it all while making it look good. But I loved it. I learned the culture and the stories behind the different types of spirits and drinks, and that’s what I try to share with my guests in my experience. I found an old shikumen building in Hongkou, and I use the ground floor as my cocktail studio. I rent out three of the rooms, and I live on top.
I remember my first guests clearly. My apartment is near several universities, and a young Shanghainese couple needed to take final exams, but they lived far away. I left them a sausage and two hard-boiled eggs — like the shape of 100, a perfect score. My friends thought I was being ridiculous, but I like leaving surprises.
Other than my own cocktail studio, which is like a private bar for my friends and me, I recommend these places:
Flair Rooftop: This bar is on top of the Ritz-Carlton in Pudong. The cocktails are good, but the view is better. It’s first come, first served, so it’s best to go early.
Speak Low: The entrance is speakeasy- style, through a “bar tools” storefront. I always order a Hendrick’s gin and tonic.
Botanist: I’m a gin lover, and the Botanist’s menu is gin-based. The cocktails don’t have names — they have numbers. I always order the #215, which mixes gin and Laphroaig whiskey with lime juice, ginger syrup, and rosemary.
Epic: The Shanghainese bartender Cross Yu has been a big name in the cocktail scene for years. This is his latest place, on a quiet street in the Former French Concession. I go for the gin fizz.
Citizen Café & Bar: They do aged negronis, either 30 or 60 days old. The style is very much French café, not bar, and it’s downtown.
Star Gu and Jing Jing: The Best Friends
The married Zhenjiang-born Chinese Academy of Sciences employee, 28, cohosts with the single Shanghai-born chef, 30, in the Former French Concession area.
Star: Jing Jing and I actually met through Airbnb. My husband [Qian Yuwei, 28] was traveling a lot for work last fall, so I decided to rent one of the rooms in my apartment.
Jing: I was redecorating my apartment and needed a place to stay, so I picked Star’s place.
Star: We quickly discovered we both have a passion for food, and we stayed up the entire night talking about what we like to eat and how much time we spend looking for new restaurants.
Star: We decided we would rent an apartment in the Former French Concession and make it a studio for foodies like ourselves.
Jing: The chef from Tai’an Table [where diners enjoy a tasting menu at a kitchen counter], which won a Michelin star, used to live here.
Star: The original plan was to use the place as a studio for cooking classes when it was free, because Jing Jing is a trained pastry chef.
Jing: But people kept booking the studio to stay! So we never really got to use it as a cooking studio.
Star: First of all, it was never meant to be a business. It’s a place where we can share our passion for food. So we keep the price low. Second, I update the page all the time with information about new restaurants or events in the city. And third, the kitchen is really well-equipped. But not many guests use it.
Jing: I still think it makes a difference. Having a nice kitchen makes a place feel like home. And the best way to someone’s heart is through their stomach.
Star: Here are some of my favorite restaurants:
Lanxin: This is a home-style place with just a few tables and unfriendly waitresses. The cooking is nostalgic, including things like duck in soy sauce (jiang ya).
Guang Ming Cun: Middle-aged and elderly people queue for an hour for the fresh pork moon cake. The younger generations have to work and raise kids, so the grandparents get stuck waiting in line for the whole family.
Wang Jia Sha: Maybe the most famous snack shop in Shanghai. The dim sum might not be the best quality, but there’s a lot of variety.
Xiao Shaoxing: In Shanghai, boiled chicken is an art. It’s a lot harder than it looks to get rid of the fat under the skin but not break it. The red color around the bone is a sign the chicken has been cooked just enough.
Jade Garden: This is a contemporary Shanghainese restaurant with authentic flavor, blue tablecloths, chandeliers, and waiters in Western suits.
Xiong Yan: The Naturalist
The single 52-year-old Szechuan native and former art-gallery owner has lived in the city for 15 years and hosts in the Zhabei district.
I decorated my home before I thought about renting it on Airbnb. I wanted to make it feel like I was in nature. People used to call Zhabei a xia zhi jiao, kind of like a poor corner of the city. But I don’t believe that. I think it’s a prime location. It’s the closest one can get to the railway station and most of the sightseeing spots.
Everyone needs to see:
The Bund: A beautiful riverside promenade.
Xintiandi: This shikumen alley area has been redeveloped into a shopping and dining destination.
The Bottle Opener: The Shanghai World Financial Center building earned its nickname for the empty rectangle toward the top of its 101 stories.
Tianzifang: It’s a warren of old lanes with houses converted into art galleries, restaurants, and boutiques.
City God Temple and Yu Garden: See the Ming dynasty Yu Garden, built in the 1500s.
Charlotte Xu: The Adventurer
The Xujiahui-born finance staffer, 26, hosts in her grandfather’s old Former French Concession home.
I used to work for an Internet start-up, and we always looked at the Airbnb site because we liked its design. So when I went traveling, I thought I’d try it. My first trip was to Seoul. We stayed in an older lady’s house, and she treated us like daughters. I began to use Airbnb all across the United States, the UK, Korea, and Japan.
Because I used Airbnb so much, I was invited to an Airbnb meet-up in 2016, and I got to know a lot of hosts. I thought being a host would be difficult, but the hosts encouraged me, and it’s gone very smoothly.
I love to work out, and there are lots of options:
Xuhui Riverside: This is a new park along the southern part of the Bund. It’s really lively, with people doing sports and climbing on rock-climbing walls.
Dimension 8 Fitness: It’s a cool gym that has unique classes, like a [water-free] wakeboarding class focusing on abs.
Bihai Jinsha: Fengxian district has a beachside with a waterskiing track. It’s operated by cables that pull you around on the water.
Fitfam: This is a spontaneous and free exercise group that sprang up in Shanghai last year. You have to follow their WeChat [a messaging app popular in China] for info.
Lily Liu: The Trendspotter
The Yantai native, 24, who works at a furniture export company, hosts in the Former French Concession district and leads a photography experience.
Three years ago, after finishing university, I needed a job but didn’t want to go back home to have my mom bother me about when I’m getting married or what job I’m going to get. I was going to head to Beijing, but then my ex-boyfriend moved there, so I came to Shanghai instead.
The Former French Concession is the best place to live in the city! When I first moved here, I was living in a high-rise tower, and I took the subway to Hengshan Road, in the Former French Concession. As soon as I came out of the subway and saw all the trees and buildings, I said, “I have to live here.” Now I know all the restaurants, all the places to go for coffee, all the boutiques.
To be honest, becoming an Airbnb host was a joke at first. My landlord gave me a sofa bed, and my roommate and I were like, “Oh, my God, it’s so soft — I want to sleep here. Let’s put it on Airbnb!” So we just put up three pretty bad pictures, and then suddenly a girl booked it for a month! She had lost her wallet and all her money and needed somewhere cheap to stay. We became good friends. After that, I realized I could really do this, so I redid all the pictures.
I used to take a lot of photos when I was in university, but when I came to Shanghai and was working, I just stopped. I didn’t have the time and I wasn’t in the mood. But then one guest saw my cameras and asked me, “Oh, you’re a photographer too?” I was too embarrassed to say that I had quit, so that conversation sparked my passion again. For my experience, I give people a disposable camera and take them around all the coffee shops and boutiques and old architecture in my neighborhood.
I have a list with all my favorite places on it that I give to guests. I call it Lily’s Map. There are 40 things on there, all my favorites. Right now my favorites are:
Tang Bing Jia: It’s in the basement of the Sogo Department Store. They do really nice Chinese-style biscuits and pastries.
Gracie’s: The best ice cream!
Closing Ceremony: This store has postcards, necklaces — little things like that.
M50: This area is where all the art galleries are. It’s really good for pictures.
Manner: If you bring your own coffee mug, you get five yuan off, so the line is full of regulars — middle-aged people, office workers. It’s a cool mix.
About the author: Christopher St. Cavish is a journalist based in Shanghai whose work has been published in Lucky Peach and The California Sunday Magazine.
