Whats it like to live in Qingpu (shanghai suburbs)

There is a place called ZhuJiaJiao as a ancient style chinese town in Qingpu.
A lots of interesting people living there including some bar or coffee shop.

And  you can just have fun in the center city of Shanghai at weekend and just slept in the
Hotel if it is too late to get home.
Anyway Qingpu is just 1~2hours way from the city center of Shanghai.

For starters, there's no such thing called "good & cheap" in China according to western standard. You will have to go "extremely local" to same money and maybe enjoy a fun beer/cocktail after a mind-blowing 30+++ hours/week.

Qingpu district has decent expat friendly area around Euro campus and British international school and not far from subway Line 2 (Xujing east) station. The rest of the district is used for manufacturing, is very far from downtown and resembles a village from any 3rd world country.

Assuming you are not able to ask for a larger package and desperate to come to CHina, I'd suggest you insist on having a separate allowance for housing (5000-6000yuan) so you could have some flexibility.
The same applies for Beijing!

Beijing's air polution is bad , Shanghai is better ....