Shanghai Transportation

There are 3 wellknown and trusted taxi in Shanghai, there are
1. ´óÖÚ Da Zhong (green colour)
2. Ç¿Éú Qiang Sheng (yellow colour)
3. Jin Jiang (blue colour)

Taxi in Shanghai is cheap. You can go to everywhere easily. But have to warn you, it will very hard to grab a taxi on friday after work time. Nobody queing for a taxi, and even you manage to grab the taxi, the driver have right to refuse you due the short distance or a bad traffic destination. I ended up have to walk from Yu Yuan to Xin Tian Di (more than 2 km, maybe?)
I will suggest you if you are going to explore shanghai city on friday, you better charter a taxi.

1 more image

If you fly into Shanghai's Pudong Airport. I do suggest you take the Maglev train from the airport to central Shanghai (Longyang Road Station). We took a taxi when arriving at the airport. the cost per person was the same as taking the maglev back to the airport(3 people). The experience alone is worth it and is a ehole lot quicker. You also have the bragging rights of travelling at 420 km/h on a train. The cost is 50 Rmb (40 Rmb if you can shown an airline ticket)

Many people feel its unsafe in booking air-tickets in China cause lots of people cheat money of others or do a bad-quality service. Several travellers from overseas in Shanghai complained that while chatting with me. Acctually in China, the booking is different from overseas especially in Europe.
I would like to recommend a good travel&air-ticket agency called JUNSU for you. JUNSU locates in Suite A, Floor 16, Chaoyangmen center, Building 567, Zhonghua Road, Huangpu district, Shanghai, China. It won a good fame through its perfect operation level, perfect service and best credit standing.
If you can not speak Chinese well, don't worry about that, just call, JUNSU has a expert-translator and some of its ticket-seller can speak English well.
And it can send you the ticket for free.
JUNSU homepage: www.air666.cn(English version offered)
My msn: yinhongfa@hotmail.com Skype:vincentairline

If you are a non Chinese speaker (like me) then don't assume that you will be able to 'get by' using English - as you can in Europe. Always take a card from yout hotel with the address in characters. Some cabbies will recognise the sound of the main hotels- but most will have no idea what you are jibbering about - I found out the hard way and ended up walking 4 miles back to my hotel late at night. - in the rain.

2 more images

Transrapid constructed the first operational maglev railway in the world, from the Pudong International Airport to Long Yang Road Metro station. It was inaugurated in 2002. It has a peak speed of 431 km/h and a track length of 30 km.

With an Air Ticket it costs for one person only 40 RMB, about 4 euro.

It is very easy to catch a train between Shanghai and Suzhou. High-speed trains depart and arrive at Shanghai's enormous main train station. You can purchase tickets from a dedicated ticket counter for English speakers. A single First Class ticket costs only RMB31 (GBP2 or USD4). The journey train varies between 35-50 minutes. The main square outside the train station is usually crowded with travellers, many from rural China - this can seem a little chaotic, but there is a visible police presence.

Taxis are SO inexpensive in China and in Shanghai it is a godsend. Remember 1) tips are not expected -- and in fact, some drivers will go crazy trying to get you exact change! 2) Someone should make a virtual reality ride at Busch Gardens or Disney called "Shanghai Taxi" -- the traffic is nuts -- and there were numerous times I just shut my eyes. It looked like we were going to wipe out a whole pile if bicycle riders or a bus was likely to simply mow us down even though they had a red light (I guess it is just a "suggestion") Still, you can easily get where you need to go. Have someone at the hotel write where you are going (in Chinese) on one of their cards. That way you will also have where you want to return to eventually, for the trip back to the hotel.

Our friend speaks pretty good Chinese, however she looks so Western, she needed to tell the drivers 2 or 3 times before they 1) realised this blond chick was actually speaking to them in Chinese 2) they understood her and she understood them! At one point, a young boy (about 8 or 9) came up to the taxi next to Andrea and (they get close in China) looked straight up at her as she was speaking to the driver, then looked at the driver (nodding his head and looking sort of incredulous that the driver didn't understand what she was saying!) He then gave us all a big grin and thumbs up before we pulled away from the curb. (With five people on our afternoon "out" we needed 2 cabs to get from place to place and she could only take one, so she needed to tell the other guy where we were headed.)

Still -- don't worry about running up a big tab -- no where we went cost more than about 20 yuan! (less than $3).

The taxis a rather convient way to get around town. The subway is fast but it is limited. For example, if you are going to Old town, there isn't a line to get you there. The walk from People's Square is interesting, and worth doing if you have the time, but it might take you an hour to get there.

A cab pretty much anywhere around town won't cost you more than 21 yuan ($3). The cabbies generally don't speak English. Attached is a checklist, which was handy, which was made available from the conceirge, but may not be available at every hotel. I would just point to the taxi cab driver.

The only one that I had a problem with was the Fabric Market. Cab drivers may not know where this is, as it moved within the past two years. Many books (including my Lonely Planet) can become quickly out of date.

It's rather easy to find one of the city's 45,000 taxicabs (except when it's raining), but they drive a bit crazy (but not as crazy as Egypt). I'm surprised there weren't more accidents. We constantly had near misses.

Different cab companies had different colors. Some are good and some are bad. The good ones were teal, dark blue, and yellow.