i am not aware of all the tourist traps in shanghai , only the ones that myself and my chinese wife encountered .
i would discourage people from joining tours , in my opinion they are rip-offs , you pay to visit a certain area but half the day is spent visiting expensive shops such as jewellers, tea shops , silk shops and the budhist temple .
we took one tour in shanghai to visit a famous water village , we hada tour guide and a comfortable air conditioned coach , our first stop was a budhist temple ( address not known ) my wife is not a budhist but respects the religion as i do and will pray and give small donations and will normally advise me not to give too much .
but on this occassion my wife was sucked into a scam and i must admit that at first , i was too .
there were two monks who were reading prayer cards that each person could pick 3 off and the monks would give their opinions on certain subjects , so we queued up for an hour and was finally seen by a monk , my wife asked the monk if he could bless her son and pray for him and us , the monk seemed really concerned and advised my wife to purchase the biggest flower candle on sale which would be lit and placed in the temple , the candle cost 600 yuan ( about £60 ) , at this point i was a little puzzled as to why we had parted with such a large amount of money but i went along with it to please my wife , we were then sent to see the monk again , this time he advised my wife to purchase a metal statue , we were led into a shop and two rather large bronze looking statues were placed on the counter , i then instantly knew that it was a scam and i told my wife of my feelings and angrily walked out of the shop with my step-son following me but my wife felt embarrassed and purchased a small emblem which cost her 300 yuan ( £30 ) .
we were then taken to the water village and were told we were having lunch and would have to have it in a certain restaurant but i refused ,
we spent about 2 and a half hours at the water village , there were lovely little shops selling hand-made products and artists painting everything possible and everything was a fraction of the cost from shanghai .
we were then taken to a big silk shop which i made a point of hurrying through and then we were taken to a big jewellers mainly selling jade products at inflated prices , i was not fooled by the selling tactics .
in my opinion this tour was a bit of a scam , the tour guides and coach driver get a commission from the businesses they stop at including the temple.