Hot pot(火锅) is one of the featuring cooking methods of Chinese Cuisine. Due to its long history, many regional styles of Hot Pot have been developed and of course most of them can be found in Shanghai. The only thing common between these styles is the boiling soup. Everything else could be totally different, including the pot itself, materials and processing, sauces, etc.
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The basic concept of Hot Pot is to have a pot of boiling soup base. The contents of the soup can vary a lot. Although a lot of things could be in the soup, the main purpose of them is jsut to add flavours to the soup. The very concept of Hot Pot is to throw the raw materials into the boiling soup for just a little while so that the tenderness of the food could be well preserved. So the soup base has to have strong flavours, and the raw materials are usually sliced to be very slim. However vegetables and meat balls, which need to be boiled longer, are also quite common in Hot Pot cooking. In most Hot Pot restaurants, you can choose among dozens or hundreds of raw materials to cook in the Hot Pot.
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Si Chuan style Hot Pot(四川火锅)

A lot of people know Hot Pot because of Si Chuan style Hot Pot. As the most popular Cuisine among numerous Chinese regional cuisines, Si Chuan Cuisine features a spicy and hot flavour, so does Si Chuan style Hot Pot. A soup base of a Si Chuan style Hot Pot usually is mostly made up of a lot of peppers, probably more than one kind. There are usually a lot more than peppers in the soup base however that add more flavours. If it happens that there are some people who can not take too much spicy food on the table, you might want to try Yuan Yang Hot Pot(鸳鸯火锅) whose pot is divided into 2 halves. One half has the usual spicy soup base, and the other has the non-spicy soup base.
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Si Chuan style Hot Pot is quite popular across the whole China. So you can easily find some good restaurants that make good Si Chuan style Hot Pots. If you like spicy food, you definitely don't want to leave Shanghai without trying Si Chuan style Hot Pots.
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Recommended restaurants for Si Chuan style Hot Pots
Chuan Guo Yan Yi(川国演义)
Ba Guo Bu Yi(巴国布衣)
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Bei Jing Style Hot Pot(京式火锅)

Bei Jing style Hotpot actually has another Chinese name: Shuan Yang Rou(涮羊肉), which pretty much means mutton Hot Pot. Lots of people in Northern China like having lamb hot pots in winter and it had been a tradition for a long time. Bei Jing, as the most advanced city in northern China, is where Shuan Yang Rou(涮羊肉) was developed and perfected. Bei Jing style Hot Pot is tuned in every way to cook mutton well: the processing of mutton. the flavour of the soup base, the sauces, etc. Good Bei Jing style Hot Pot restaurants should provide very slim mutton. The soup has to be hot enough so that the mutton should sizzle once put into the soup. Just one or two minutes in the soup, the mutton should be good enough to eat. In proper sauces, it should taste incredibly good.
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Recommended restaurants for Bei Jing style Hot Pots
Dong Lai Shun(东来顺)
Xiao Fei Yang(小肥羊)
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Cantonese style Hot Pot(粤式火锅)

Cantonese style Hot Pot features some new trends of Hot Pot. In Cantonese style Hot Pot, a lot of things that can never be seen in traditional Hot Pots are being put in the Hot Pot. The soup base could be a fish head or mostly consists of medicines. Beef and mutton are not the main options any more. Fish balls, crab meat, shrimp, mushroom are all quite common in Cantonese style Hot Pot. The traditional Hot Pots are better to have in winter. But Cantonese stye Hot Pots are good to have whatever the season is.
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Recommended restaurants for Cantonese style Hot Pots
Dolar Shop(豆捞坊)
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	Chinese	Pin Yin
Hot Pot	火锅	Huo Guo
Yuan Yang Hot Pot(	鸳鸯火锅	Yuan Yang Huo Guo
Shuan Yang Rou	涮羊肉	Shuan Yang Rou