The Playstation 2 should work ok, provided you've got it set to 240 volt current which we use over here, but games bought in Shanghai won't work on a British (called PAL) Playstation 2, i'm pretty sure of that. The good news is that you can buy import games via the internet, so if you buy a PS2 from Shanghai, you'll still be able to get the games for it. One potential problem to look out for - if they're adventure games, all the text will be in Chinese, making the game ten times harder to play because you don't know what the hell you're supposed to be doing! (unless you can read Chinese!) A good suppier of import games is
http://www.mx2.org
Just follow the link for games, but make sure you click on PS2 IMPORT and not PS2 UK. They're in the Channel Islands so you save on duty, and you can phone them to check on compatibility! Another bonus is you get to play all the games before your friends, because they're released in the far east quite a long time before they're released over here!