This hotel is terribly bad. The room is dirty and smelly, clerks are rude, the food is lousy, I would only willing to give 1/2 a star!! Stay away from this hotel.

The Peace Hotel is one of the dirtiest I've stayed in anywhere in the world. The price is high and the cheapest hostel in any city is cleaner. The service is non-existent and some floors are littered with dirt and debris. The place smells bad and the rooms are musty. Give it a miss.

This hotel may be historic and in a great location but it is hardly enjoyable. I booked my room on the hotel web site which was a pretty good deal. My room was dark and dingy. I had no water pressure and had to shower in the sink. When I called for room service they didn't understand me and so they hung up. I would not recommend this hotel to anyone.

I stayed with my wife along with our families for a trip to China. We decided to stay at the Peace because of its reasonable price and its great location along Nanjing Road, Shanghai's famous shopping district. I will first start off with the only positive for this hotel. The location can't be beat in terms of its vicinity to Nanjing Road and also the Bund River, etc. Now I understand that the Peace Hotel is a famous historical landmark built in 1929 with its architecture carefully preserved. However, under no circumstances can I recommend anyone to stay in this hotel unless it was a total emergency. When you first enter the hotel, its smells like rotting wood. The carpets are disgustingly worn and the hotel is in complete need of remodeling. This place looked like something out of a horror movie. Things get worse when you enter the rooms. We had four rooms and all of them had serious mildew and mold issues in the bathrooms (see pictures attached) that were disgusting and the carpets continued to be dirty and worn down. The showers were designed in such a poor way that if you took a shower, water would not drain properly and ended up flooding the entire bathroom. (Some advice: Bring flop flops for the shower.) We stayed on the 2nd floor of the South Tower (where the restaurants were-We didn't eat there for obvious reasons). If you unfortunately do need to stay there, pick a room higher up as you can hear the traffic and horns honking at all times during the day.
I simply do not comprehend how this hotel has a 5 star rating.
To add insult to injury, the hotel staff was also below average and many had poor Enlgish compared to other Chinese hotels I have stayed at.
This is about a 1.5 star hotel at best and I am being kind. This might have been the dirtiest hotel/motel I have stayed at (Hotel 6, Days Inn, etc. included)
I did speak to the Concierge and they did say the hotel will be shut down sometime in 2007 for a full remodel. Don't stay there till then!

Some general advice:
-When shopping for hotels in China, the best rule of thumb is to stick with foreign run hotel chains (Hyatt, Marriott, Novotel, Sofitel, etc) as Chinese run hotels have a tendency to have inflated star ratings (like the Peace.) and not be as well kept.
-Unless you are at a department store or some type of chain store, most items can be bargained for (especially street vendors). If you are paying more than 50% of their first offer or the listed price, you are probably overpaying (Try to get them down to 25-40% of their first offer)
-Stick with cabs with meters. Cabs are ridiculously cheap.
-Pedestrians do not have the right on way! Watch out when crossing the street!