One Card, Twenty Sights: How Shanghai's Summer Pass Turns the Whole City Into a Deal

Shanghai just put 20 of its best sights on one card

If you are in Shanghai this August and the price tags of the city's headline attractions are starting to add up, the 37th Shanghai Tourism Festival has quietly handed you an answer. Its summer-season 'Le Xiang Hui Min' leisure package (乐享惠民休闲度假套餐) strings 20 of the city's most-visited sights — from the Shanghai Tower's observation deck to the Huangpu river cruises, the Ocean Aquarium and the old-town water towns — onto a single physical card, and bolts a hotel stay onto the deal.

It launched in early August on the Meituan app and had sold close to 600 bundles by 23 August. The idea is simple: one card, one upfront price, and a 'stay-and-play' package that turns a scatter of separate tickets into a single, planned itinerary.

• •20 attractions bundled onto one card
• •Launched early August; ~600 sold by 23 Aug
• •Hotel + tickets in one 'stay-and-play' package

What the card actually gets you

The 20 spots are split into three tiers, which is the clever part. The 'benchmark' tier is the bucket-list stuff — Shanghai Tower's Shanghai Heights deck, the Haichang Ocean Park, the ERA acrobatic show, the Blue Elf theme park, with single tickets that run past ¥380 on their own. The 'popular' tier covers the easy wins: a daytime Huangpu river cruise, the Jin Mao Tower's 88th-floor deck, the World Financial Center, Madame Tussauds, the Changfeng Ocean World. The 'quality' tier is where you slow down: the Spring Autumn sightseeing bus, Jinshan City Beach, Fengjing ancient town, the Shanghai Film Park, the Auto Museum and the Glass Museum.

The whole card is valid through 31 August, so it covers the back half of the summer season neatly. Most spots need a one-day-advance booking; a handful — Jin Mao and the sightseeing bus — take same-day reservations.

• •Benchmark: Tower deck, Haichang, ERA show
• •Popular: river cruise, Jin Mao, SWFC, Tussauds
• •Quality: Jinshan Beach, Fengjing town, Auto & Glass museums
• •Valid through 31 Aug; most need 1-day booking

How a visitor uses it — and the one catch

Here is the honest part. You order on the Meituan app, then collect a physical card at the front desk of a partner hotel when you check in. You bind it through the 'Aiwenyi' (爱文亿) WeChat account with a code, using real-name verification — and passports are accepted alongside Chinese IDs, which is the detail that makes it usable for international guests at all.

The catch is that the whole chain lives inside Chinese apps, so it suits visitors who are already comfortable with Meituan and WeChat. If you would rather not wrangle the booking yourself, the same 20 sights are still bookable individually — you just lose the bundled discount. Treat the card as a money-saver for the app-confident, not a requirement to see the city.

• •Order on Meituan, collect card at partner hotel
• •Bind via Aiwenyi WeChat — passports accepted
• •Lives in Chinese apps; individual tickets still work

Who it's perfect for — and who should skip it

This is built for the visitor who wants four or five solid days without juggling a dozen separate bookings and prices. The bundles are organized by hotel, so 'check in, get the card, go' has become a genuine pattern this month — some guests have extended their stays by two nights just to use it. If you are on a short layover, or you prefer to wander without a plan, the fixed list will feel restrictive and you will leave value on the table.

Read it as Shanghai's bet that visitors want one receipt, not twenty. The tourism association says autumn and New Year editions are already in the works, so the 'Le Xiang Hui Min' idea looks set to become a regular fixture rather than a one-off summer promo.

• •Best for 4–5 day stays, app-comfortable visitors
• •Skip it for short layovers or loose planners
• •Autumn and New Year editions planned

Our take

Shanghai has always been a city of good deals hiding in plain sight; the 'Le Xiang Hui Min' card just organizes twenty of them into one wallet-sized pass. Use it if you are here for the back half of August and happy inside Meituan — it is probably the cheapest legal way to tick off the Tower, the river and the old towns in one go.

If the booking chain sounds like a chore, don't force it. The city's headline sights are all reachable on their own, and a private day tour can fold several of them into one smooth, guide-led loop without you touching an app at all.