Pedalling advice: How an architect truly gets to know a city

Being a travel guide is part of living in a foreign city. Every expat has received requests from family members, friends and acquaintances for recommendations. Sometimes they’re looking for tips for a good bar or restaurant; at others, they want a whole itinerary. My first attempt at putting together a guide to Shanghai took the form of an email. Updated and tweaked for every incoming visitor, this list has evolved over the years into a PDF and a keepsake to share. I have lost track of who has it now.

Earlier this year I helped to curate a “24 hours in Shanghai” guide for a Chinese design platform. AI travel advice is on the rise but there’s clearly strong demand for local knowledge and trusted human touchpoints. This is especially true in China, which has an entirely different set of search engines, apps and maps to the West. It can be far harder for non-Chinese speakers to find reliable tips online through a layer of translation, while understanding the cultural nuances to identify honest reviews among all of the bot-spawned listings.

I feel fortunate to have arrived in Shanghai from London when I did. It was 2009 and proper smartphones and apps such as Wechat didn’t exist yet, so Drew – who is now my husband – and I would get around on our bikes using physical maps. The best were stacked up at the arrival hall of Shanghai airport and available for free. We had done a bit of cycling in the UK but those trips (from Land’s End to John O’Groats, for example) were more about the journey. After arriving in China, we pedalled all around, determined to get to know our new home.

It was one of those freewheeling expeditions that led us to a basement storehouse in Yangpu selling old Phoenix bikes, an iconic Shanghai brand founded in the 19th century. We had discovered a treasure trove of old frames in the basement, painted in China Post’s pine green or China Electric’s blue and gold. After buying up the lot, replacing the original components and selling a few more than we expected, our bike shop Factory 5 was born. We soon started producing our own frames and components, tapping into a community of people looking to explore Shanghai on two wheels. That bike shop was the first home and project for our architecture studio: Linehouse started out on the mezzanine floor above the noisy workshop.

The skyscrapers in Pudong are probably the first things that come to mind when you read this but, at ground level, Shanghai is a flat city that lends itself perfectly to cycling. The traffic can seem daunting at first but it moves like a synchronised dance, making room for everyone on wheels. Bike-sharing schemes have become a part of the furniture here and compared to the 2010s – when the trend first took of and pictures of broken, discarded bicycle mountains flooded the internet – the quality of such services is much improved.

I continue to cycle everywhere every day. I drop the kids of at school on one of our commuter bikes and, on weekends, we all ride down to the Huangpu river or up to Suzhou Creek, stop for lunch and bring along any visiting friends. I take the bike to site visits if I can arrive looking respectable. Why? Convenience, exercise and to clear my head. I like observing and feeling the rhythms of the city.

In a place such as Shanghai, which has almost 25 million residents, I see things change in real time and my days are brightened by the sight of that which stays the same, at least for a while: the fresh fruit stall with the white cat, the sycamore trees that line the route home, the local noodle shop. Weaving through the traffic, a short cut through the little lane, a nod and a smile to the curious uncle who squeezes a tyre and asks how much my bike cost.

I’ve been taking these journeys for the past 17 years so it sometimes feels as though there aren’t many roads left unrolled. That gives me a rare perspective on Shanghai’s guide-book-worthy offerings. The pressure of distilling the best of your beloved city into a series of lists and bullet points is up there with choosing a favourite film or song – and there are always more details to add and things to update. Be sure to make a reservation, don’t forget that the crab-roe xiaolongbao (a kind of dumpling) must be eaten with vinegar and ginger, and… Oh, did Bastard move location? Shanghai’s restaurant and hospitality scene is ever-changing and so is our city guide.

Now in its fourth iteration, we have corrected the beginner’s mistakes, formatted it for phones, included photos and added graphical maps to group options in one glance. Arguments with foodie friends about which jianbing (pancake) stand is the best has put us through a rigorous taste test. Now, as I cycle around the city, I keep coming back to the same realisation – that Yunnan place is missing. I must update our guide and reshare.

I say “our” guide because these days the job of updating this list involves the entire studio sampling our way through the city. As architects, we see Shanghai through a very multicultural and creative lens. Food, places or things with a nostalgic, historic or local quality fascinate us. This can be a simple bowl of scallion noodles or the Ho Tung Villa that sits in the middle of the new Shaanxi Road development. This collision of the old and the new is one of the reasons why we call Shanghai home and why I am happy to get on my bike and be a guide.

Ten years ago we almost took Norman Foster for a ride. He is a keen cyclist and I still have the itinerary that we mapped out for him. He was in his eighties at the time so I insisted on coming along. Unfortunately, his trip got cancelled – but Norman, if you’re reading this, we’re still here whenever you want to get on your bike and see another side of Shanghai.