Free and low cost things to do in Shanghai, China: a leisurely day out around Yu Yuan 豫园 Yu Garden

Last updated on July 1, 2026

Looking for some leisurely activities for a day out in Shanghai? Visit Yu Yuan, a traditional Chinese garden within easy access to public transport.

Brief overview of Yu Yuan Yu Garden

Yu Yuan 豫园, (‘yuan’ meaning ‘garden’) in Shanghai is a traditional Chinese Garden and is also the name of the general area around it and the metro stop nearby. Yu Yuan is a 10 minute stroll from Yu Yuan Garden Metro Stop. The garden itself is a ticketed site, but you can stroll around the Chinese lotus pond outside for free and pick up some tasty steamed buns nearby or dine at the famous Nan Xiang Steamed Bun Restaurant and go shopping at the variety of stores in the area.

The garden was constructed in 1559, 50 years after the Humble Administrator’s Garden, one of China’s top traditional Chinese gardens, in Suzhou. It has a sister garden built to resemble the Shanghai one, in Hamburg, Germany.

Why Yu Yuan makes a great destination for a day out in Shanghai

Shanghai is a modern metropolis with relatively little to offer tourists in terms of original ancient Chinese history and culture compared to places like Beijing (the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden Palace etc) or Terracotta Warriors in Shan Xi, or stunning natural beauty like Guilin. It’s a highly modernised and internationalised concrete jungle city and popular with expats from western countries. But you don’t go on holidays to go somewhere similar.

Yu Garden is great because it is a break from the modern skyscrapers and concrete landscape all over Shanghai, it offers both the relaxing experience of natural scenery and modern facilities and shops, all within easy access to public transport. If you are in Shanghai and have time for a day trip out of the city, Suzhou is definitely always recommended, but if you don’t have time of a trip out of the city, Yu Garden can give you a taste of authentic Chinese gardens and cuisine at the same time.

What you can do at Yu Yuan 豫园 Yu Garden and general information:

• Around 650m from Yu Garden metro stop
• Garden entry fee is ￥30 (low season) ￥40 (peak season) for adults, but the outside area around it also contains lotus ponds, Chinese buildings, and bridges
• Surrounding Chinese corridors chang lang (长廊) are lined with restaurants and stores that sell artistic products
• Lots of Chinese restaurants that sells Shanghai specialties – steamed buns, pastries, great for brunch, lunch, afternoon tea or dinner.
• Open air lotus pond and the walkway over it are good photo spots
• Public toilets in the food court
• Stroll through the Old Street for a taste of Old Shanghai, vibrant and lively at night
• Note there are no public seating areas outside the garden

Yu Yuan in detail

The Yu Yuan district has traditional style buildings that contain stores selling artistic products like Chinese tea cups, decorative items like lamps and carvings, and traditional Chinese pastry/steamed bun/afternoon tea type restaurants, which overlook the lotus pond in the middle. This is a great place to spend a leisurely day out in Shanghai, due to its close proximity to conveniences like public transport, restaurants, shops, and food courts, while still being able to admire traditional Chinese architecture and gardens. People are always moving through the area, so it’s a great place for people watching.

The walkway over the pond is a great place to admire the pond and lotus flowers and good place for some nice photos.

As you make your way there from the metro stop, the area around it is full of buildings in the style of traditional Chinese architecture, so you know you are in the right area. See a short video of the area here. (opens an external tab) when you see them. If you want a map app for your smart phone to guide you, you should get either Baidu Maps or Gaode Ditu (Gaode Maps), which are widely used in China since Google services are not available in China. As with most apps, it is easier to download them before you go to China, in case the Google play store cannot be accessed in China. But the most reliable way of getting the app is to go directly to their website on a mobile device, and you will be prompted to download the app.

The streets are all over the place, from newer, large roads to interweaving, old/ancient small alley ways so sometimes specific addresses in an alley way might be a little difficult to find. Small alleyways often do not permit and are not physically accessible to vehicles, for example, the Old Street in Jia Ding, so if you are arriving by taxi, the driver will only be able to drop you off at the nearest vehicle access point. While Google Maps may work with a VPN, I’d recommend using the local maps to get around. Both GaoDe Di Tu (‘高得地图’, Di Tu meaning ‘Map’) and BaiDu Maps (百度地图) are designed in China specifically for China, you’ll get more reliable results. Both are available as a free smartphone app or you can access them online, with verbal (in Mandarin) and visual directions given (the map is in Chinese though).

Once there though, all the lanes are organised into an orderly grid like fashion with easy to read signs. Follow the signs and you won’t get lost.

There are addresses at the end of each alleyway on the wall, and numbers on the wall outside the shops.

If you visit in July, which is smack bang in the middle of summer, Shanghai will be a little humid, and the area will have lots of people

The area is full of long Chinese corridors (长廊 chang lang) lined with new but traditional-styled rooms that sell Chinese arts and craft objects, like ceramic tea cups, bamboo brush holders, bamboo carvings, clay figurines, modern figurines and souvenirs. There is lots of places to eat, from hole-in-the-wall style food outlets to dine-in restaurants, fancy or not. The good thing is there are almost no cheesy touristy souvenirs to be found (except some magnets and toys directly outside the south entry to the actual Garden and some in a large crafts store). If you are a fan of t-shirts, there is a t-shirt shop that looks nothing like your typical touristy t-shirt shop: Choose a size and colour (white or black) and a design which they will print on site on your shirt for you. The T-shirts aren’t even poor quality wearable cloths used for printing lame designs. The designs are artistically drawn vector pictures of animals and people. Much better than any other cheesy tourist T-Shirts I’ve ever seen anywhere else. Unfortunately (and understandably) pretty much all of these shops don’t allow photographs.

Luckily for you, here are some photos I managed to get:

Tea cups

Staff at one shop assured me that they are very familiar with overseas or interstate visitors and can package your item appropriately.

Bamboo carvings

A variety of ceramic incense or single plant cutting holders (ie, a single bamboo plant), tea cups, etc.

I got this hand made blue tea cup with a cute relief goldfish inside. Chinese art do not contain octopuses!

And this:

Green tea cup with a carp inside:

When the sun came out slightly and it was still drizzling:

Garden entry price

The entry price for the Yu Yuan garden is ￥40 in peak season (April 1 to June 30th and September 1 to November 30) or ￥30 in low season (all other times). Children shorter than 1.4m are ￥10 each.

If you don’t want to to pay, you can experience the same ambience for free by strolling around the outside and in the lotus pond garden. Visitors can see lotus flowers, ponds, walk across Chinese zig zag bridges, and view Chinese architecture, under the canopy of trees.

The lotus pond outside Yu Garden

In the very right of this photo you can just see some red, blue and yellow plastic umbrellas. These are part of the aforementioned kiosk, that faces one of the garden’s entry. On the left is the pedestrian walkway bridge that zigzags through the pond.

You can buy fish feed at the little kiosk opposite the south entry to the Garden to feed the fish in the pond.

Food and Dining options in Yu Garden

There is a very popular restaurant upstairs from the lotus pond called 南翔馒头店 Nan Xiang Steamed Bun Restaurant that serves lots of pastries and dishes, great place for an afternoon tea with friends or alone. I was very lucky to have been invited by friends to have afternoon tea there. For someone who does not like dumplings, buns, and pastries, it was really good and I highly recommend it.

Entry leading to the restaurant

The people in the black uniform are police. They are around many popular tourist areas/high people traffic areas.

Prawn Xiao Long Bao

Sesame pastries

Sticky rice-filled lotus root slices in syrup

Tea and shao mai

Brown rice shao mai

Snow pea sprouts

Curry pastries

Shanghai is known for its steamed filled buns, in particular, Xiao Long Bao 小笼包. A popular steamed bun around Yu Garden is the crab meat soup bun. These are quite large, about 8-10cm in diameter and as the name suggests, filled with crab meat mixed with pork, and soup. They are sold in a lot of places at Yu Garden, usually around ￥20 give or take a few Chinese Yuan.

Millions of Gourmet food court (睦邻阁私房菜)

A little secret is this nice food court called Millions of Gourmet that is more like a buffet with a huge variety of food. When I say variety I mean variety. They have noodle soup, vegetables, seafood, meat, deep fried food, cold salad, soup, stirfrys, rice, beverages, steamed buns, pastries, cold food, plus an array of Chinese food that do not fit in any of these categories. They also sell the large steamed crab soup buns served with a straw to suck up all the juice.

The food court, called Mu Lin Ge Private Kitchen (睦邻阁私房菜 in Chinese), is on level 2, in the Old Neighbourhood Snack Street (老邻居小吃世界). The way the food court works is like a pay per serve buffet. Grab a tray, then walk along each section, choose your own ready-made dishes or choose for freshly made noodle soup, and pay at the end of the section. Each dish type is labelled with their price above the counter.

Note: Many places in China are cashless now, and it is most likely that the food court is too.

These signs above each set of dishes tell describes the dish name and price. I’m actually quite impressed with the organisation and signage.

Snails

Chilli Prawn

Crab claw and steamed egg pudding

These are steamed crab buns. Steamed crab buns are really popular in this area, lots of restaurants sell them and prices can vary between ￥18-25 each. These ones in the food court are cheaper and come in little plastic steamers with holes in the bottom for ventilation. The skin of the bun sticks to the bottom of these so if you aren’t careful when lifting it out, all the hot soup will leak out of the holes in the bottom. Best way to eat it is slowly from the top, poke a hole to let out the steam, and suck the soup with a straw they provide.

Pickled vegetables

This is a vegetable dish, called Bao Ta Cai 宝塔菜, or literally, ‘treasure pagoda vegetable’. It’s solid and crunchy like a radish but takes on the flavour of the sauce its in. This one is pickled but I have seen it stirfried in other places.

Sugar crystal coated fried pear.

Assorted pastries

Highly recommend coming here with a bunch of friends so you can try a bit of everything. Also the food court has seats and tables, which the same cannot be said of the outside Yu Garden area. There are no seats around the Yu Garden lotus pond or shops unless you eat at a restaurant. This is probably where probably the only public toilets are available around this area.

To see videos of the food court, visit here and here (opens external tab).

For more things to do in Shanghai, check out my other posts here.

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