Yongjia Road: bookshops, coffee and garden villas in Shanghai

Yongjia Road runs under dense plane trees, and the stretch is packed with garden villas and small shops in equal measure. The trees do most of the work — you can walk it on a bright afternoon without baking. What follows is what one visitor to the street singled out.

The shops

1. Siyuan Vintage Bookstore (思远旧书店) — a vintage bookshop tucked inside a residential block rather than on a shop front. The signage covers old books and posters, secondhand clothing and jewellery, vintage ornaments and mid-century furniture.
2. Dimoon — a French-style jewellery shop where the lighting is the point. Come for the light on the displays rather than for anything else on the street.
3. Melt season — the marker here is outside the door: a vintage piano overgrown with plants. Worth the stop for the entrance alone, even if you buy nothing.
4. Metal Hands Coffee (铁手珈啡制造局) — one of several specialty coffee shops along the road, and one of the better-known names among them.
5. T12 — another specialty coffee shop in the same cluster. The coffee places sit close enough together that you can pick on mood rather than on distance.
6. Captain George — a third specialty coffee shop on this stretch. There are more besides: Daxiao Le, OPS and San You Er Fen Zhi Yi all sit in the area.
7. gubigubi — a restaurant in the same row of small shops.
8. Herasa (禾壤HERASA) — home-style cooking with a very deliberate hand with spices. The spice work is what people remember, not the setting.

The villas

1. Xia Yan Former Residence (夏衍旧居) — the former home of the writer Xia Yan, now one of the historic buildings on the road.
2. Ruijin Hotel (瑞金宾馆) — a hotel set in historic garden villas. If you would rather sleep inside this part of the city than visit it, this is the address that puts you in it.
3. Rong Zhixun Former Residence (荣智勋旧居) — another of the old villas along Yongjia Road.
4. The Taiyuan Road junction — where Taiyuan Road meets Yongjia Road, the greenery closes over to the point that one visitor described it as a scene out of a Ghibli film. Go for the canopy itself.

Staying on or near Yongjia Road means the old villas, the coffee and the shops are all within a walk of each other; Ruijin Hotel is the obvious base if you want the garden-villa setting. compare all the main booking sites before you commit.