Our flights to Japan with Air China meant that we had the option to do a 9 hour layover in Shanghai on the way back from Tokyo. China isn’t somewhere I have any immediate plans to visit, so it seemed like a good way to get our feet on the ground of a new country without the hassle of visas and any planning beyond a day. Shanghai offers the perfect opportunity for this, with its world-leading maglev train getting you into the city in record time, maximising any time you get in the city.
Even better, the visa-free transit stamp is offered to UK citizens for up to a whopping 144 hours – meaning you could leave the airport for six days as long as you have proof of an onward connection!
I had it all planned out – we’d take the maglev train, change to the metro and get off near Nanjing Road, walk down to the waterfront to see the iconic skyline, walk along the water to Yuyuan Gardens to see the old town, grab some dinner, and do a loop back to a metro station to head back to the airport. Simple.
This post contains affiliate links. Please note if you buy or book anything through my links, I may earn a little commission that helps keep this site running, at no extra cost to you. Thank you so much for your support!
We did visit Shanghai, but it did not go to plan.
First of all, our flight from Tokyo was delayed, leaving us a couple of hours short before we’d even arrived. It was typical as Air China had actually been pretty prompt on all the other flights, and while I’m very glad we got to Tokyo on time and that we didn’t have any stress on the connection on the way out, it’s typical that the delay had to happen on this flight in particular!
It then took a little while to work out what to do on arrival. Luckily someone was on hand and gave us the correct form for a transfer, which is slightly different to the blue forms everyone else was filling out for arriving in China proper. Ours was white with a blue strip at the top, and we had to fill out our details, the flight we arrived on, the flight we’d be departing on, and that was about it.
It all seemed fairly straightforward, so we joined the short queue for immigration. Of course, it was the slowest immigration queue any of us had ever experienced. I don’t think even the queue for my work visa in Canada took this long proportionally, and that took so long I almost missed my connecting flight.
There were less than 20 people in front of us, and it took us almost an hour to get through. It became even more inefficient though, as while one of us was going through, they closed half the desks!
Not only that, but remaining three of us were led away by immigration officers to another big desk! This was the most unnerving passport control I’ve ever been through, and it wasn’t even for a proper entry visa. First, it was just me and Ash who were taken away, so I thought it might have been because of our San Marino stamps. You can get official passport stamps in San Marino, however they are NOT border control stamps, so they are technically not valid – and China definitely seems like the country that would pick up on something like this.
When I saw Ash was no longer at the desk I was taken to, I breathed a sigh of relief. A lady took my passport, grabbed the attention of two other officers, they all looked at my passport while the first one looked something up on her computer, and then they all nodded in agreement and handed my passport back! Very strange!
Our friend Leif, with three middle names, was then also taken away. And we think that might be why. We all have middle names except for the friend who was let straight through – it’s so typical that she went first, as she had no idea what was going on! When we first checked in for the flight, we were interrogated on which names were first and middle, so it’s the only thing that made sense.
Read more: Visa & Immigration Stories From The Road
Anyway, we were through! Long-time readers may remember that this was me and Ash’s THIRD attempt to enter China! Once to get from Hong Kong to Vietnam which we couldn’t figure out because they needed proof of journeys that we couldn’t book, and our original flights to Japan in 2020, which of course got cancelled. Third time lucky, apparently!
After all of this, on top of the two hour flight delay, we were now down to barely six and a half hours. And after the turbulent entry into China, we were concerned about the exit.
I reasoned that they’d be much happier about letting people out of the country than letting people in – and it turned out I was right – but it didn’t make anyone relax as we made our way into the city.
You can buy an all-day train ticket which includes the return maglev journey as well as unlimited metro use for about £8. This is perfect because the maglev doesn’t go all the way into the city centre. We had to alight after eight minutes at Longyang Road and change to the metro the rest of the way, which takes around 15-20 minutes.
The maglev train, which runs by levitating above the track via magnets, is AWESOME. It hits 300km/hr within a couple of minutes, which is an insane speed, and not even its fastest. I’d read that they reduced the top speed from 400km/hr, but apparently it does sometimes still run at that, depending on the time of day! At the top speed, it’s the fastest passenger train in the world.
Honestly, as sad as it sounds, the layover was worth it just for experiencing something like that! And even sadder, it was actually a selling point for us doing the layover in the first place.
We rode the metro the rest of the way and decided to get off at Nanjing Road E. station, which meant an easy short walk down Shanghai’s main pedestrian street to the famous waterfront.
A short walk down the most crowded street I’ve ever seen.
The problem in China is that we had no way of contacting each other. Even if we could get online, we had no apps that work in China. Keeping four people together on a very crowded street in the dark isn’t the easiest, especially when I have a habit of wandering off, but it’s monumentally more stressful when you know that if you get lost, you genuinely probably won’t find the others again!
Every few feet, there were marquees with police officers watching the crowds from above – almost like sinister tennis umpires. Around half way down the street, we saw a girl racing up the road with several armed police chasing her. As we got closer to the waterfront, my friend said she was starting to feel uneasy about the fact we were the only Westerners there and we were being stared at by everyone – I hadn’t even noticed that, but now I did. By now, we were ON EDGE.
Which is sad, because everything was probably fine, but after our experience at immigration and the unknown about getting back through for our flight, our stress was definitely heightened more than it should have been.
We got down to the waterfront and there was a security checkpoint. Security checkpoints had been EVERYWHERE. Getting onto both the maglev and the metro, we had to put our bags through a scanner. There were cameras absolutely everywhere, pointing in all directions.
(If you look closely, you can see a stand mounted with about ten different cameras in the middle of the photo above!)
We decided not to go onto the waterfront properly as it was so busy, and settled for photos from behind the wall. I got some really cool ones from Nanjing Road too!
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is one of the coolest buildings I’ve seen! And it was actually even better that we were there at night as it’s lit up in all different colours.
I suggested we walk along the waterfront promenade to somewhere quieter and get to Yuyuan Gardens, but everyone was just stressed about what was awaiting us back at the airport, and we were concerned about getting lost when even our offline maps weren’t working. We took a small detour along a side street where we’d seen some market stalls in the hope that we could at least pick up some food, but they turned out to be either gifts or desserts.
And so that was our experience of Shanghai. A very crowded street and an iconic but limited waterfront view.
It’s a shame as I actually liked what I saw of the city, and although it was a bit of a tick-box visit, I didn’t want it to LITERALLY be a tick-box visit. The public transport was so easy to use, and lots of signs were in English (although we did wonder if that was because it’s the airport link).
The police felt intimidating, but as a result it was safe. Not that we felt it when we saw them running after someone at full pelt! In fact, I wonder if we hadn’t seen that, whether everything would have been different. I really feel like that’s what pushed us over the edge!
I also wonder if we would have had a better, or easier, experience during the day. Certainly I don’t think we would have been so worried about losing each other, which was probably our biggest concern of all.
It’s a shame, too, because I really don’t like writing about negative experiences. I don’t want that to be my summary of a country, particularly one so rich with culture, history and food. China has so much more to visit for than its cities.
But this is the only experience I have, so I’ve decided to write about it anyway – and sometimes it’s the smaller travel stories that you remember, too. And you know what? Sometimes that’s the way things work out. Not everywhere is going to blow you away, and that’s fine too.
So it’s with a tinge of guilt that I post this, because China deserves so much better, I’m sure of that.
Read some happier Asia travel stories below:
⭐ My Top 10 Highlights Of Our Trip To Japan
⭐ A Love Letter To Osaka, Japan: Why It’s Worth More Than A Day Trip
⭐ Loving Northern Vietnam – Hanoi, Halong Bay & Ninh Binh
⭐ Koh Tao: Our Favourite Thai Island
⭐ One Of The Best Weeks Of Our Lives Volunteering At Elephant Nature Park
⭐ Our Final Destination In Asia: Singapore
Discover more from An Orcadian Abroad
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I think it’s commendable you saw a bit of China on such an incredibly-short layover, as China is one of those destinations that really aren’t geared for such a quick stop. Heck, even when I spent two nights in Shanghai years ago, even that felt rushed! You at least got a taste of what the massive country has to offer, and I do hope you can return and take your time seeing it all. Thanks for sharing, Clazz!
Ahh thanks, Rebecca! I have to say I was surprised that I managed to put together a wee loop that we could do in such a short space of time. It’s just a shame it didn’t work out!
I Absolutely would want to try that train too 😅 I’d also love it if you actually did a trip to China and compare it with how this trip went. It does certainly feel rather intimidating with all the stressful checks and so much police presence, but perhaps if you stayed a few days you’d start to ignore it and ‘settle in’.
Thanks for reading! 🙂 Yes, I wonder that too. A friend visited pre-Covid and she said she doesn’t remember anything like what we saw on Nanjing Road, which makes me wonder if it’s a new thing, or if there was something going on that we didn’t know about. I tried to find out afterwards if there had been some sort of event! The security checkpoints are definitely a thing though, at all the train stations etc.
Have you ever read Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost? If not, you should. It’s hilarious and well-written and a very interesting look at the country. Some of your experiences on this layover don’t surprise me that much after reading that book.
No I haven’t, but I’m intrigued now! I’ll have to try and find it.
what a wild ride of a time for your short time in Shanghai
Haha, always an adventure with me!!! Or a misadventure…
its a very smoggy city. when I visited all my day time photos look a bit yuck as a result, but the colours you captured at night I really like!
Oh yes, that’s a very good point. Maybe visiting in the evening was for the best, in the end.
Great blog, super informative. How much time did you leave between leaving Shanghai City and your outbound flight at Shanghai airport?
I am looking at a 19 hour stopover.
Thanks!
Ah thank you – I’m glad you found it helpful, even though we didn’t have the best experience haha. We left the city around 4 hours before our flight I think, which was way too early. I think we would have been fine leaving 3 hours before, but we didn’t want to risk it in case passport control took as long as it did on the way in (it didn’t!).