No sunshine in winter and extremely hot & humid in summer is the typical Shanghai climate condition, which together makes it especially difficult to build with passive design. According to a recent field survey, there are around 11K individual villages in the Shanghai region, some of them still keep their original building form for the past 100 years. These local dwellings still provide a relatively good internal environment for the local residents. Following our recent detailed survey and drawing on these heritage dwellings (more than 100 houses located in Feng Xian, Pudong), this paper focuses on what we can learn from the traditional wisdom in passive design and its aesthetics to adapt to the Shanghai climate. Also, Shanghai climate data is analysed to support these findings.