Unlike many Chinese cities that appear to have forgotten that people occasionally like to perambulate, Shanghai is made for walking. Start your own walk in Fuxing Park smack-dab in the colonial-era French Concession, with its shady sycamore trees and stuccoed villas. In the park, you'll find grannies in pajamas belting out Chinese opera, and Mao-suited men taking their caged birds for a stroll. Around the corner at 7 Xiangshan Road is the former residence of Sun Yat-sen, modern China's founding father. His house, which contains period furniture and books, reminds you of what Shanghai felt like during its first heyday. Afterward, wander the nearby lanes — past elegant mansions now subdivided into several families' homes, complete with outdoor wok stations and billows of hanging laundry — to get a sense of street-level Shanghai today.

• 1. Fuxing Park
  105 Fuxing Zhong Road, Shanghai, China; 86-(0)21-6372-6083 31.21899121.464163
• 2. Sun Yat-sen's House
  7 Xiangshan Road, Shanghai, China; 86-(0)21-6437-2954 31.21899121.464163