Renmin Gongyuan/Renmin Guangchang (People's Park/People's Square)

Description:

• Shanghai's "Central Park" and central square are built on the site of colonial Shanghai's horse-racing track (dating to as early as 1863), once a favorite amusement for the British community and upper-class Chinese. Today the original 12 hectares (30 acres) of the racecourse have been parceled out into a quiet pleasant park in the north (complete with a small lake, rock garden, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Moroccan drinking and dining establishment Barbarossa, amusement rides, and clusters of old folks playing mahjong and chess, and on the weekends putting up listings for their single children and grandchildren who are too busy to date or find mates), and Renmin Guangchang (People's Sq.) to the south. Opened in 1951 and renovated in 1994, with an intermediary spell as a public reckoning ground during the early days of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the square is now Shanghai's cultural and traffic center, with an underground shopping arcade, the central subway station, the Shanghai Museum, the Grand Theatre, the 20-story Municipal Hall, and the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Besides being a magnet for locals who come here to feed the pigeons, fly their kites, and gossip on the benches, the square, surrounded as it is by some of Shanghai's tallest and most modern buildings, is also a wonderful place to take in exactly how much Shanghai has grown up.

• © Frommer's 2013