Xuhui District, Shanghai — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Xuhui District?

Faith and art share the streets here. Saint Ignatius Cathedral raises its twin brick spires over Xujiahui, and the smaller Community Church and St John's Cathedral keep the district's chapel heritage alive nearby. The Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall honours the scholar whose family name gave Xuhui its own, set within a garden that also holds his grave.

Museums do much of the rest. The Shanghai Museum of Arts And Crafts, the Liu Haisu Art Museum, the Qian Xuesen Library & Museum, the Shanghai Entomological Museum and the C. Y. Tung Maritime Museum spread across the borough, while the Long Museum West Bund anchors the riverside galleries down on the Huangpu.

What is the history of Xuhui District?

The name carries a man. Xuhui grew around the family lands of Xu Guangqi, the Ming scholar remembered at the Xu Guangqi Memorial Hall, and the settlement that formed there took the name Xujiahui, meaning the Xu family stream junction. When Jesuit missionaries built Saint Ignatius Cathedral and the observatory and schools around it, Xujiahui became a centre of learning and Catholic worship in Shanghai.

Later the western streets fell inside the French Concession, filling with villas and shaded lanes that survive around the Former Residence of Ba Jin. That layered past still shows. Church spires, memorial gardens and concession villas stand within a few blocks of each other across the district.

Where is Xuhui District?

Xuhui covers about 55 km² of central Shanghai, running from the Xujiahui crossroads down to the Huangpu, where the reclaimed West Bund forms its river edge.