3 to 4 star hotels at Nanjing road or near to metro r like Charms hotel,Ramada Plaza,Bund hotel,Salvo hotel.Even cheaper ones nearby r Seventh heaven hotel,Nanjing hotel,Ambassador hotel,East Asia hotel.The 5 star rated ones r Lemeridien,Central hotel,Howard Johnson,Parl,Radisson.All these r near n maybe about 10 to 15 mins walk to metro.heap shopping at Nanjing pedestrian street,most items here r not actually branded but good bargaining is needed also along the Nanjing road towards the Bund r lined with numerous shops.Cheap goods at subway of the Shanghai science n Technology museum.,555Nanjing xilu,International Pearl City at Hongqiao.Sichuan bei lu another good shopping street for reasonably priced goods.Huai hai zhong lu mainly caters for more expensive n branded items.Xujiahui has a mixture of cheap n upmarket shopping centres.Weather will be cold in December but not peak somewhere around 10 to 18 celcius by mid december.Pleasant enuf for travelling n not wet too.

Nothing is cheap in Shanghai, everything is so expensive compare to other Chinese cities.

Suzhou is the place to go for cheap shopping and sightseeing.

Check out the Citadines Jinqiao ApartHotel, it,s on Beijing Dong Rd and 5 minutes walk to Peoples Square Metro, where u can have easy access to just about anywhere you want to go in Shanghai, also only 5 minutes walk to the top of Nanjing Road walking street...take Line 1 to Shanghai Science and Tech stop, and you will have direct access to a market where you can shop and bargin for hours.

1) What price range are you actually looking for?

2) Sightseeing information is readily available online and in print so I don't see the point of regurgitating those. You could easily read for free at the National Library, Borders and Kinokuniya. I've also provided some URLs below to get you started.

http://www.chinahighlights.com/shanghai/

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/1d57/5be/

www.frommers.com/destinations/shanghai/

lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/china/shanghai/

roughguides.com/website/…

http://www.timeout.com/travel/shanghai/

travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/shanghai.htm

3) Cold and somewhat wet, not really dry -- but neither is it raining all the time. Look on weather.msn.com/daily_averages.aspx… for historical weather data.

If you have any more queries, email me at ellyse99@yahoo.com and put "TripAdvisor" and your own username (eg PandaSea) in the subject line.