I spend a lot of time in Shanghai (here now, in fact), and while it's certainly not one of my favorite cities (e.g. to me, it feels MUCH more crowded than NY), I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to visit if I had never been before.

Moving on, I don't feel the need to sell Shanghai itself anymore at this juncture because there is tons of info about it in this forum alone.

But, I will offer two pieces of advice:

1) figure out a way to fly business class
-if your company is reasonably flexible, and you have a USAir account, between now and the end of the month, you can buy miles directly from them (i.e. you'll get an invoice that should presumably satisfy your finance people) for 1.75 cpm, which will permit you to get to Shanghai and back for less than $2000, all in (you can even make a RTW trip out of it, if you so desire)
-you can also simply procure upgrades somehow, but the above strategy is better if your company will go for it

2) consider tacking on a side trip (or stopover) to somewhere else
-we'll help you think of ideas as to "where" if you provide a bit more info about what floats your boat, and how much vacation time you can allocate to the cause (even a weekend would be sufficient to take in some amazing experiences)