Shanghai or Shenzhen?

Shanghai sits on the brown, silty mouth of the Yangtze, where nobody swims. The only sand is at Jinshan, an hour and a half away, where a sea wall encloses a filtered bay in an industrial setting. For most visitors, swimming means the hotel pool.

Shenzhen has proper beaches, though none near the centre. Xichong, at the tip of the Dapeng peninsula, has a wide curve of sand facing open sea with hills behind it. Dameisha and Xiaomeisha are long and crowded on summer weekends, and all of them are about an hour or more from Futian. It is a day out rather than part of every day, but it is a real swim in warm water.

Shanghai has a cooking style of its own and is one of the great places to eat in Asia. Benbang dishes such as red-braised pork, shengjian buns and soup dumplings sit alongside hairy crab in autumn, morning scallion pancakes, food from every Chinese region and serious fine dining. The French Concession lanes add bistros and good coffee.

Shenzhen eats well too, but in a different way. It is a city of newcomers, so the best meals are regional: Chaoshan beef hotpot, Hakka salt-baked chicken, Cantonese dim sum, plus fish picked from tanks at Nan'ao or Shekou. These meals happen in malls and office districts rather than old food quarters, and menus are often only in Chinese.

Shanghai has far more to see. The Bund's banks and trading houses look across the Huangpu to the Lujiazui towers, shikumen lane houses fill the former French Concession, and the Shanghai Museum holds a first-rate collection. The Ming-era Yu Garden and the Jade Buddha Temple are older layers, though the classical heritage lies mostly in the towns nearby.

Shenzhen was a cluster of fishing villages within living memory. Its sights are the skyline, OCT Loft's converted factories and Dafen's painting workshops. Nantou old town, Dapeng Fortress and the Hakka walled village at Crane Lake are worth the effort, but they are scattered and modest.

Shanghai is the place for a serious night out. It has speakeasies behind unmarked doors in the French Concession, hotel bars above the Bund looking at lit-up Pudong, and both polished clubs and underground techno rooms that run until dawn at weekends. You choose a district and stay there.

Shenzhen has a few separate clusters. Coco Park has bottle-service clubs, Shekou has relaxed pubs and terraces, and OCT has smaller arts bars. Many locals spend the night in private karaoke rooms. There is little life on the streets, and venues sit far apart inside towers and malls.

Shanghai is flat delta country. Its green spaces are Century Park, the riverside paths along the Huangpu, the low wooded Sheshan mounds and the Dongtan wetlands on Chongming Island, which are good for birdwatching. Real hills are more than a day away.

Shenzhen has much more to offer outdoors. Wutong Mountain rises to just under 950m with views to Hong Kong, and a coastal trail on the Dapeng peninsula links rocky headlands and coves, with kayaking off the eastern shore. Shenzhen Bay's waterfront path passes mangroves where waders feed in winter. Autumn and winter are the seasons for walking.

Both are good bases, and Shanghai is the stronger one. Suzhou's classical gardens are about half an hour away by high-speed train, Hangzhou's West Lake and the Longjing tea villages about an hour, and Nanjing's Ming walls a little further. The canal towns of Zhujiajiao, Tongli and Wuzhen add stone bridges and boat rides, so there are days of choice.

From Shenzhen, Hong Kong is the obvious trip, under half an hour to West Kowloon. Guangzhou's Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and Shamian Island are just as close, and Macau's Portuguese old town is reachable by ferry or bridge. Beyond those the list thins out, and crossing to Hong Kong or Macau needs the right visa to get back into the mainland.

Shanghai has the bigger set of family days out. Shanghai Disney Resort is on the metro, Legoland and Haichang Ocean Park are on the city's edges, and the large hands-on science and natural history museums suit rainy or cold days. The long distances and the crowds of the national travel weeks tire out small children.

Shenzhen does well too. The Overseas Chinese Town (OCT) parks put Happy Valley's roller coasters, Window of the World and Splendid China side by side, and there is a safari park and a beach at Xiaomeisha. Little information is in English, though, and the summer heat in both cities makes the cooler months better for a family trip.

Shanghai's metro is one of the largest in the world. It reaches both airports, the railway stations and Disneyland, and the Maglev speeds in from Pudong. The Bund and the French Concession are good on foot, and ferries over the Huangpu make a cheap, scenic shortcut, though crossing town still takes a while.

Shenzhen's metro is just as clean and bilingual, but the city stretches about 80km. Getting from Shekou to the Dapeng beaches takes most of a morning, and multilane roads make walking between districts dull. Shared bikes along the flat bay waterfront are the pleasant exception. In both cities, set up mobile payments before you arrive.

Shanghai covers the whole range. Luxury flagships line West Nanjing Road and Lujiazui, and East Nanjing Road has its old department stores. The independent shops of Wukang Road and Anfu Road sell Chinese designer fashion and ceramics, and fabric markets will make a qipao or suit within days.

Shenzhen's appeal is narrower but unusual. Huaqiangbei's floors of electronics stalls are worth wandering even if you buy nothing, Luohu Commercial City is full of tailors and copy goods, and Dafen sells hand-painted canvases. Elsewhere it is mostly polished malls, with few boutiques or crafts to take home.

In both cities, local food and public transport cost very little, so the difference lies mostly in hotels and drinks. Shanghai's central hotels around the Bund and Jing'an are priced like a European capital's, and its cocktails and Western restaurants match any global city.

Shenzhen goes further for the money. Comfortable modern rooms cost well below what they do in big international cities, and a careful traveller spends modestly. Prices rise only at the theme parks, the Shenzhen Bay luxury hotels and the expat bars of Shekou and Coco Park.

Shanghai has the deeper stage tradition. Acrobatics are a fixture of its evenings, Yue opera grew up in its theatres, and Peking opera plays at the Yifu Theatre near People's Square. The city also has its own Kunqu troupe, a symphony orchestra and Grand Theatre productions often in English, and its jazz history goes back to the 1930s.

Shenzhen has good modern halls, the Concert Hall in Futian and the Poly Theatre among them, but most of the programme is touring and the theatre is in Mandarin. Its own contribution is the Chinese indie and rock bands in small venues around OCT Loft.

Both cities share the Chinese habit of bath centres and foot massage, but Shenzhen makes more of it. Its huge bathhouse complexes stay open all night and are famous enough that people cross the border just to spend an evening in one, and there are hot-spring resorts in the surrounding hills and in Huizhou.

Shanghai offers more ways to slow down. You can go to traditional Chinese medicine clinics for acupuncture and cupping, sit in temple courtyards or tea houses, join morning tai chi in the parks, and walk the quiet French Concession lanes.