Yuyuan Old Town Snack Route

What Yuyuan is

Yuyuan is a Ming-dynasty garden — begun around 1559 and finished, after nearly twenty years, around 1577 — built by the official Pan Yunduan for his father Pan En to enjoy in old age. The name "Yu" carries the sense of ease and of pleasing one's parents; it is a garden of filial devotion. In some twenty thousand square metres it folds together rockeries, ponds and covered walkways, and sets the great Lake Tai stone known as "Yu Linglong," counted among the finest in the Jiangnan region — a whole landscape of hills and water compressed into a narrow plot. It fell into ruin under the Qing, survived the upheavals of the Taiping Rebellion, and was restored again and again to reach us today. The garden itself is a ticketed area, but the eating happens outside it — in the "Yuyuan Bazaar" and around the City God Temple across the way.

The Old Town — where Shanghai began

The quarter around Yuyuan is the Old Town (Laochengxiang), once ringed by a city wall and the oldest core of Shanghai. Long before the foreign concessions raised their towers, people lived, traded and worshipped here. So the food was never invented for tourists; it is the everyday Shanghai of the past, kept as it was. The Bazaar is a district of Ming-and-Qing-style roofs running eave to eave, and beneath them stand the old houses of "xiaochi" — small eats: soup dumplings, tangyuan, vegetable buns, spiced beans, pear-syrup candy. Each portion is small, which is exactly the point: you graze a little at a time, house after house.

How to walk this route

Start at Yuyuan station on Metro Line 10. Come out onto Fangbang Road and head east toward the Bazaar. Wake up your mouth first with spiced beans and pear-syrup candy — the dry snacks and sweets long sold at the temple gate — then, in the heart of the Bazaar, go for the soup dumplings at Nanxiang. It is a famous shop with a queue, so the earlier the better. At the pond, cross the Nine-Zigzag Bridge to the Huxinting teahouse; the bridge bends nine times, and the saying goes that "you can't walk straight, so evil can't follow." After tea, break the sweetness and salt with Ningbo-style black-sesame tangyuan and a vegetable bun, then finish sitting down over dim sum at Lubolang. Reckon about ninety minutes on foot, mixing standing snacks with places to sit.

What to look for

The star of the route is the wooden teahouse floating at the centre of the pond — Huxinting. It is the oldest surviving teahouse in Shanghai; climb to the upper floor and the windows hold nothing but the lotus pond and Yuyuan's tiled roofs. Sipping gaiwan tea while the crowds cross the bridge below is itself the attraction. To eat, don't miss the crab soup dumplings at Nanxiang, founded in 1900 — nick the thin skin, sip the hot soup, then eat the rest. And Lubolang, a Shanghai-cuisine house that has hosted state guests, serves refined fried pastries such as the eyebrow-shaped "meimao su" filled with crab — a different order of care from the street stalls. Add the meat-free buns of Chunfeng Songyuelou and you have seen, in a single walk, the full breadth of Shanghai's small eats: sweet, savoury and vegetarian.

Before you go

Weekends, holidays and especially the Yuyuan Lantern Festival around Chinese New Year get very crowded. For an unhurried meal, the morning just after opening is best. Payment is mostly electronic, though some small old shops may still need cash. Old houses close without notice and change their hours, so treat the times listed here as a guide and confirm on the spot.