Blossoms Shanghai on foot: Huanghe Road, Jinxian Road and the Peace Hotel

Blossoms Shanghai (繁花, Fánhuā), Wong Kar-wai's first television series, aired over the winter of 2023–24. Afterwards, people came to Shanghai looking for the places in the show. Two of them are ordinary streets you can walk tonight. The third is a hotel lobby that has welcomed visitors for close to a century.

Huanghe Road after dark

Huanghe Road (黄河路, Huánghé Lù) runs for a few short blocks north of Nanjing Road West, a short walk from People's Square. In the series it is where the 1990s restaurant boom plays out, with neon signs and rival banquet halls. Shanghainese restaurants still line the street, and several now carry signage that nods to the show.

Go after eight, when the signs are lit and the dinner rush has eased. Order what the city eats anyway: drunken chicken, smoked fish, pork braised dark in soy and sugar. Portions are sized for groups, so two people should order three dishes, not five.

Jinxian Road, smaller than you expect

Jinxian Road (进贤路, Jìnxián Lù) is a narrow lane in the former French Concession, close to Maoming Road South. The series puts its late-night diner, Ye Dongjing (夜东京, "Night Tokyo"), on this kind of street, with a counter, a few tables and neighbours who come every night. There is no single doorway to photograph. What you come for is the lane itself: plane trees, family-run noodle shops and laundry on bamboo poles above the pavement.

Weekday lunch is calmer than weekend evenings, when queues form outside the better-known kitchens.

The Peace Hotel, unchanged in outline

The Peace Hotel (和平饭店, Hépíng Fàndiàn) stands at the corner of the Bund and Nanjing Road East, and in the series it is where people dress up and make deals. It was built in 1929 as Sassoon House and still has its green pyramid roof and Art Deco lobby. Non-guests can walk the ground floor and have a drink in the jazz bar, where live sets usually begin in the evening.

《繁花》里的上海，一半在街上，一半在摄影棚里。

Half of the show's Shanghai is on the street and half is on a studio set. Many interiors were built on sets, so on these streets you find the texture of the show more than its exact frames. The streets were there before the cameras and are still doing what they did.