It is not a style of cooking that is normally found in Chinese restaurants in the west. However there are several dishes that have become popular in the west and are found on the menus of most Chinese restaurants these days. I am of course referring to the famous Peking Duck. There is also the Peking style fillet steak served on a sizzling hot plate. In restaurants, this is done more for effect than for any practical purpose, but in the cold climate of northern china, the hot plate is needed to keep the food warm, and not just for show.
Shanghai represents the cooking of the East and more particularly the Eastern seaboard of China.
Thus, one of the distinctive characteristics of this type of cookery is the use of fish. Fish, fried whole and covered in strong sauces such as sweet and sour, or hot and sour or chilli and blackbean are ways of cooking the fish. The other method is simply steaming the whole fish and once cooked sprinkling some shreds of spring onion on top of the fish and pouring a mixture of hot oil and soya sauce over the top of it. Shanghai is also the home of the preserved egg, the so called 1000 year old egg. This is in fact an egg that has been preserved in a special type of mud so that the egg white becomes black and the yolk goes green.