Shanghai or Zhangjiajie?

Shanghai has the edge, if only just. The city's own shore is the silty mouth of the Yangtze, but Jinshan City Beach, about an hour and a half south by train and metro, has a sea wall enclosing a filtered, sandy bay, and in summer the water there is warm enough for a proper swim. The setting is industrial, though, and anyone who wants a real beach has to fly to Hainan or travel out to the Zhoushan islands.

Zhangjiajie lies deep in the mountains of western Hunan, with no coast at all. Baofeng Lake is for boat rides rather than swimming, so summer rafting in the gorges is the closest it comes to a day in the water. Otherwise, a swim means the hotel pool.

Shanghai is a destination for food in its own right. Soup dumplings, shengjian buns, red-braised pork and autumn hairy crab come alongside cooking from every Chinese province, international kitchens and fine dining, plus serious coffee in the French Concession.

Zhangjiajie's cooking is narrower and fiery: sanxiaguo three-pot stew, smoked bacon, chilli pickles and wild mushrooms, eaten on the evening food streets in town. Near the park gates the food is mostly generic tour-group fare, and there is little choice for anyone who avoids chilli.

Shanghai offers several days of sightseeing: the treaty-port facades of the Bund facing the Lujiazui towers, the shikumen lanes and villas of the former French Concession, and the bronzes and ceramics of the Shanghai Museum, with the Yu Garden and West Bund galleries on top.

In Zhangjiajie the mountains are the attraction and the city comes second. Puguang Temple and the Tujia folk-customs park take half a day at most, and the deeper heritage lies out in the old towns.

The gap here is wide. Shanghai's nights run from hidden cocktail bars in the French Concession and hotel bars looking across at the lit Pudong skyline to techno rooms that stay open until dawn at weekends.

Zhangjiajie goes to bed early because its visitors rise at dawn for the parks. A beer by the river or a karaoke room is as late as it gets, and Wulingyuan is quieter still.

This is Zhangjiajie's whole case. Thousands of sandstone pillars rise out of misty forest at Yuanjiajie and Tianzi Mountain, macaques forage along the valley paths, and a cable car climbs from the town centre to the glass walkways of Tianmen. The trails are paved and stepped, so the scenery is accessible but crowded at peak times.

Shanghai is flat delta. Century Park, the riverside paths for cycling and the Dongtan wetlands on Chongming Island are pleasant, but real hills mean leaving the city for more than a day.

Shanghai's high-speed lines open up the whole delta. The gardens of Suzhou are about half an hour away, West Lake in Hangzhou about an hour, Nanjing's Ming walls a little more, and canal towns such as Zhujiajiao and Wuzhen are close at hand.

Zhangjiajie has three strong outings: the stilt houses of Fenghuang, the waterfall village of Furong Town and the ruined Tujia capital of Laosicheng. After those the choice thins out to more mountains, and Fenghuang is better with an overnight stay than as a day trip.

Shanghai is the easier city with children: Disneyland on the metro, Legoland and the ocean park, hands-on science and natural history museums, and lifts at the stations for buggies. Summer heat and the long distances between sights are the main strain.

Zhangjiajie thrills older children with its swinging cable cars, glass walkways and macaques, but it has almost nothing designed for them. Steep steps, queues and long days make it hard going with toddlers and pushchairs.

Shanghai's metro is vast, air-conditioned and signed in English, and it runs to both airports and the Maglev. Even so, crossing the city takes time, and visitors need mobile payment set up before they arrive.

Zhangjiajie is spread across a town centre, the park gates at Wulingyuan some 30km away, and scattered outlying sights. Buses and cheap taxis link them, and many people hire a driver. Inside the park the shuttles are hard to work out, with signs mostly in Chinese, so most visitors split their stay between two bases.

In Shanghai you can shop at every level: luxury flagships on West Nanjing Road, old department stores on the East Nanjing Road pedestrian street, Chinese designers on Wukang Road and Anfu Road, and tailors at the fabric markets who make suits and qipao in a few days.

Zhangjiajie offers mountain produce, teas and souvenirs. The pieces worth seeking out are Tujia xilankapu brocade and Miao silverwork.

Zhangjiajie is easier on the wallet day to day, with cheap rooms, meals and taxis. Its catch is the separately ticketed forest park, cable cars, lifts and glass bridges, which become the largest cost of the trip.

Shanghai is cheap at street level, with dumplings, the metro and many free museums. Its central hotels and cocktails, though, cost what they would in any global city.

Shanghai has a real stage life of its own: Kunqu, Yue and Peking opera at the Yifu Theatre, a resident symphony orchestra, ballet and musicals at the Grand Theatre, acrobatics nightly and a jazz tradition going back to the 1930s.

Zhangjiajie's evenings are given over to large staged folklore spectacles. The open-air show beneath Tianmen's cliffs is striking, but the city has no theatre or music scene of its own.

Shanghai offers more ways to unwind. Its big bath centres let you spend hours or a whole night moving between hot pools, saunas and rest halls, and it also has hotel spas, acupuncture clinics, tea houses and tai chi in the parks.

In Zhangjiajie, relaxing mostly means recovering from the trails with a foot massage after the steps, with a hot-spring resort out in the countryside as a further option.