A guide to local favorites around Zhongshan Park
- By Lisa Movius
- Photos by Yue Wu
Just west of the Jing’an central business district, the area around Zhongshan Park has always been the city’s less expensive, grungier fringes. Though still dense with old neighborhoods and historical sites, its charming streets are a little less packed and frantic than downtown. The area is home to Shanghai’s oldest live music venue, Yuyintang, as well as its recently opened branches. In the past few years, the government of its district, Changning, has been upgrading its main avenue, Yuyuan Lu. The park itself, first built in 1914, is one of the city’s largest and loveliest, full of community life: Watch for kite fliers whose highflying baubles can be spotted from quite a distance.
Meet Lisa Movius
Lisa has lived in Shanghai since 1998, working as a journalist covering art and culture around Asia but with occasional side gigs working at rock club Mao Livehouse and teaching college journalism. She misses the open-water swimming of her native California but plunges into as many of Shanghai’s pools and murky lakes as she can.
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Email bytheway@washpost.comZhongshan Park