People's Square

Welcome to People’s Square, Rénmín Guangchang, the vibrant heart of Shanghai, right at the city’s center where history, culture and everyday life come together. Long before it became the wide, open plaza you see today, this was a racetrack where, during the British colonial era, horse races entertained the foreign elite, a reminder of the cosmopolitan yet deeply unequal Shanghai of the early twentieth century. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, everything changed when the racetrack was cleared and the area was transformed into People’s Square, a public space open to all, marking the close of one chapter and the start of another, that of a modern, unmistakably Chinese Shanghai. Today, the square is a vast urban crossroads bordered by gardens and major cultural landmarks. To the north lies People’s Park, a peaceful green retreat where locals gather each morning to practise tai chi, play chess, or relax. On weekends, it transforms into the famous marriage market, where parents display photos and details of their single children in hopes of finding them a match — a tradition characteristic of Shanghai. Just ahead stands the Shanghai Museum, its round shape inspired by an ancient bronze ding symbolizing harmony and stability, and inside you’ll find one of the finest collections of Chinese art, spanning more than five thousand years of bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy and painting. Beneath your feet lies the city’s busiest metro hub, linking several major lines, and something few visitors know is that this spot also marks the starting point of National Highway G318, China’s longest road, the zero mile of a legendary route stretching more than five thousand kilometers from east to west. If you followed it from here, you’d leave Shanghai’s skyscrapers behind and cross the countryside of Jiangsu, the mountains of Sichuan and the high plateaus of Tibet before reaching the Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge on the border with Nepal, a journey often compared to a Chinese Route 66, symbolizing the connection between the city and the country’s farthest horizons, between the ocean and the Himalayas. Today, People’s Square remains a place where the city’s pulse is felt every day.