Every pin on this road was wrong, two of them badly, and the reason is worth knowing: Chinese public maps run on a deliberately offset datum, so a coordinate scraped off one and published as ordinary latitude lands half a kilometre out. All five are re-measured and converted. Three of the five buildings are on Shanghai's own heritage register, which is unusually candid about naming who occupies them now.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Long Bar, Waldorf Astoria
The building is the second Shanghai Club, finished in the winter of 1909 and dated 1911 by the state register that protects it. The club died in 1949, the room became a seamen's club, then the Dongfeng Hotel, then in 1989 the first KFC in Shanghai on the second floor, and then it went dark in 1998 and stayed dark for a decade. Everything you touch at the counter is a reconstruction and the hotel says so itself, rebuilt from old photographs for the 2011 opening. The house calls the counter thirty four metres and the Shanghai gazetteer calls the original thirty and a half, and nobody has reconciled them. Ask for the Shanghai Buck, the bar's own first signature and the drink it claims as the earliest classic cocktail written in China. Live American jazz Wednesday through Saturday, late.
the Club building 1910 by the archive and 1911 by the register, the counter a 2011 reconstruction · 5.30pm till 1am Sun to Thu, till 2am Fri and Sat; jazz Wed and Thu from 8.45pm, Fri and Sat from 9pm · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Jazz Bar, Peace Hotel
Ground floor of Sassoon House, on the national list as part of the Bund group and in the city's very first heritage batch back in 1989. The room was the Horse and Hound before it was the Jazz Bar, which the hotel states on its own dining page. A Shanghai news report of December 2024 dates the old timers' band's first night on this stage to Christmas Eve 1979, while the band itself is usually dated to 1980, and its players are elderly and the line up has changed more than once, so believe nothing about any individual musician without a date attached to it. A cocktail during the set is the whole transaction, and since about 2023 the hotel has also sold a museum tour that bundles one in. Sets run nightly, but four sources give four different finishing times, so go early rather than late.
the building 1929, Fairmont here since 2010, the band on this stage since Dec 1979 · evenings from 6pm, band sets nightly; four sources give four closing times, so do not arrive late · verified Aug 2026
- 3 · The Anchor
Old Jesse
One narrow wooden door on Tianping Road, about ten tables over two cramped floors, and the founding room of what is now a group with a dozen addresses across the city. Do not confuse it with the mall branches: this is the original and the only one worth the trip. Its own history is contested, with Chinese sources putting the opening at 1990 and others at 1995, and neither rests on anything a state office ever wrote down. Order the salt cured Jesse chicken, which regulars call the signature of the signatures, and the red braised pork the kitchen's whole reputation is built on. It shuts between lunch and dinner and it is small enough that turning up without a booking is a gamble. The language at the next table is Shanghainese rather than Mandarin, and that is the point.
the founding room of the Jesse group, opened 1990 or 1995 and the sources disagree · 11am till 2.30pm and 5pm till 9.30pm daily, shut between services · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Speak Low
The door is inside OCHO, a bar tools shop on Fuxing Middle Road, and the stairs behind it climb through separate rooms at separate prices. The second floor is loud and sociable and every floor above it gets quieter, rarer and dearer, which is the entire design. Its owner group still lists it, though that page has not been touched since 2024, so the freshest thing standing behind it is a Shanghai listings site that rechecked the venue in the spring of 2026. It is not in the top fifty of Asia's fifty best bars for 2026 after most of a decade on those lists, which tells you about the competition rather than about the room. Start on the second floor with a Corpse Reviver No. 2 or a Negroni Sbagliato, both of which this bar genuinely pours.
opened 2014 behind the barware shop; the operator's own page has not moved since 2024 · 6pm till 1.30am Sun to Thu, till 2.30am Fri and Sat · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Captain's Bar
Six floors up inside the Captain Hostel, in a building the city put on its heritage register in 2015 under the name of the state trading company that used to hold it. The register records five storeys and the bar trades on the sixth, which is worth knowing before you decide the terrace is original fabric. The view is the whole reason to climb, the entire Pudong skyline from a plastic chair, and it is still the cheapest seat on this stretch of the river. The backpacker prices in its reputation are out of date though: local listings now put two drinks at around a hundred kuai a head and the kitchen has discovered tuna tartare. Take a beer out to the rail before the light goes, and ring ahead if you want an evening table.
the building on the city register since 2015, the bar a floor above it · from midday till 1am; one source says Mon to Fri from 2pm · verified Aug 2026