If you want to visit all the tourist attractions you haven't been to yet, but have not been willing to pay their often pricey entrance fees, here's good news for you. According to CNN Go, tomorrow is National Tourism Day and many of the city's most popular tourist sites will cut down their prices, or might even let you in for free, such as these ones:
• Shanghai Wild Animal Park
• Shanghai Arboretum
• Jinmao Tower

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More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

Timelapse video shot from the Oriental Pearl Tower. From the same guy that brought you this. more ›

Awesome fireworks, marred only by the awful commentators. Don't miss the Oriental Pearl Tower transformed into a fiery phallus towards the end. We thought for a moment it was going to blow up: more ›

Hey! Not to toot our own horn or anything (okay, we're tooting it a little), but it looks like we've been mentioned on the Agence France-Presse. That makes us feel kind of famous! In an article about Shanghai's recent attempts to eradicate Chinglish, the AFP quoted our picture of the sign at the Oriental Pearl Tower, where visitors are warned that "ragamuffin, drunken people and psychotics are forbidden to enter." Heh heh heh. It's too bad they didn't also include that bit about the "peculiar smell of effluvium." We were thinking of making that our new tag line. more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

Slow weekend for music, lucky for us the bands that are playing (Live Earth is the exception) are worth seeing. This is the weekend for concerts dedicated to raising environmental awareness, accomplished by plugging in watt hungry amps and singing about sex and beer. On Friday Recycle a pop punk band, less pop more punk, will be joined by old school punkers Loudspeaker and garage rock favorites Banana Monkey at 4Live. On Saturday PK-14 (Public Kingdom for Teens) an amazing post-punk band from Beijing marks their return to Shanghai for the first time in over 1 1/2 years with two shows. Celebrating their launch of environmentally-inspired tees (proceeds of which will go to charity) the clothing shop ENO gets things rocking at 4pm with July 16th a garage rock band from Nanjing, Boojii the Shanghai Shoegazer band and the cat's meaow....PK-14. For those who can't get enough of them at the afternoon show (that should be everyone!), PK-14 will also be playing Saturday night at the Dream Factory. If great post-punk music isn't your thing then plenty of cheesy pop music will be available at the official Live Earth concert being held under the Oriental Pearl Tower (not exactly the most environmentally friendly of buildings). more ›

One of the landmark structures, Jinmao Tower, has been erected, and another, the Shanghai World Financial Tower, is being built. ... more ›

At least they don't lag behind in anything important!

胡锦涛主席启程出访五国
Chairman Hu Jintao sets out to visit five countries, including 美利坚合众国 (the USA). Did you hear about the dinner at Bill Gates' house? more ›

We wrote about Thames Town earlier, and it seems that Kristie Lu Stout, armed with her "Shanghai Diary" has taken it upon herself to bore many, many people with her take on what several hundred thousand people have already had their take on. You'll enjoy this: more ›

Acting as a tourist-in-your-own-city can be addictive. Having enjoyed our exploration of the Longhua Temple and Martyrs’ Memorial during the Spring Festival, we looked for another fresh expedition right on our doorstep. more ›

Last month, the developers and designers of the nearly-a-decade-in-the-making Shanghai World Financial Center (WFC) skyscraper in Pudong caved in to pressure from China's Japan haters and announced they had made alterations to the planned appearance of the building, which will be one of the world's tallest if it ever gets completed. Most notable among the changes -- the large circular hole that was to cut through the building's top floors was replaced by a large trapezoidal hole (uh oh, murderous cult alert). Some had complained that the circle design looked too much like the "rising sun" image from Japan's flag, especially considering the WFC's developer, Mori Building, hails from Tokyo. (Of course, the building's designers Kohn Pederson Fox -- three decidedly un-Japanese names -- don't have offices in Tokyo, opting instead for three other powder kegs of anti-China sentiment: New York, London and, er, Shanghai.) more ›

Shanghaiist knows a thing or two about Australia. So we obviously know a bit about sharks (or “Noahs”, as they’re called Down Under). We therefore read with great interest that the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium has opened a special exhibition called “I Love Sharks -- Our Ocean, Our Home.” more ›

Just what in the name of Gabby Reece is going on beneath the Pearl Tower this week? They've trucked in 300 tons of sand and dumped it at the base of our city's signature structure -- and no, it's not for one of those God-awful "foam parties" (that doesn't happen until Saturday). It's not a giant ashtray either, although that no doubt would be quite popular considering the way Chinese tourists choke them down. Nope, this fake beach almost on the shores of the Huangpu is for the grandaddy of beach volleyball tournaments in all of China -- the 2005 China National Beach Volleyball Championships -- a marathon that began way back in April and included stops in seven Chinese cities, culminating with the Shanghai finals, which began Tuesday and end on Friday. more ›

Shanghaiist’s worst travel experience ever was on a 15-hour “sleeper bus” (ha!) from southern Shandong Province back to Shanghai. Packed to the rafters, Arctic January temperatures, layers of ice on broken windows, an ancient, festering interior dotted with rusty metal benches and the occasional sodden blanket (actual interior, pictured), black smoke chundering out of the engine console inside the vehicle, a desperate need to urinate for the second half of the trip and a Soup Nazi of a driver who couldn’t even be bribed to stop. To make matters worse, we joyously spied the night lights of the Oriental Pearl Tower in the disorientating haze of bladder pain and thought the horror was over, only to discover it was a miniature of the Pearl Tower located about 200 kilometres northwest of the city and we still had a four-hour crawl left to go. more ›