36 Hours in Shanghai...

Shanghai is a city flush with cash and Ferraris, but beneath all the excess, there’s more artistic and culinary substance than ever.

Shanghai’s appeal has long been its breathtaking skyline, glitzy nightlife and brash, anything-goes attitude. Cultural mecca it was not. In recent years, though, China’s commercial capital has started to develop a more sophisticated side. A host of high-profile museum openings and the launch of several influential art fairs — ART021, West Bund Art & Design and Photofairs Shanghai—have solidified Shanghai’s status as a major player in the Asian art world, while new performing arts venues like the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall have vastly improved its theater and music offerings. Yes, there are still shopping malls aplenty, but also, increasingly, independent bookstores, creative entrepreneurs and seriously good coffee shops. Shanghai is still a city flush with cash and Ferraris, but beneath all the excess, there’s more substance than ever.

For a city its size, Shanghai had been famously short on two things — green space and art. To remedy that, the city splashed out to build its own Museum Mile, along with a riverside park, in a new district known as West Bund. The Yuz Museum (entrance, 150 renminbi, or about $22.8), housed in a Sou Fujimoto-designed former aircraft hangar, has been at the forefront of the cultural awakening here, hosting high-profile shows featuring Andy Warhol, Alberto Giacometti and the Brooklyn-based artist KAWS in recent years. A short walk down the river is a fast-growing arts complex filled with studios and galleries, including the venerable ShanghART (free), which exhibits works by emerging Chinese artists and sells pieces by more established names like Zhou Tiehai and Ding Yi. Added to the mix this fall was another highly anticipated gallery, the Tokyo-based Ota Fine Arts.