The Bund, Shanghai

The Bund corresponds to the wharf area along the western bank of the Huangpu River, which was once a part of the so-called International Settlement area of Shanghai controlled by foreign forces during a period that stretched from the final chapters of China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing (CE 1644-1911) Dynasty, through to the middle of WWII, when the Japanese, who had occupied much of this part of China at the time, forced the other foreign forces out.

The architecture along the Bund comprises such a wide array of Western styles, as well as Chinese styles, that it is renowned the world over as a "World Architectural Exhibition". The 52 buildings that officially make up the Bund span Art Deco, Baroque, Beaux-Arts, Gothic, Neo-Classical, Renaissance and Romanesque styles. Shanghai boasts the largest and richest collection of Art Deco structures in the world.

Some of the more prominent buildings that belonged to the Bund's foreign-occupation era have names which, not surprisingly (the area of the Bund corresponds to the original British Settlement), conjure up colonial times. These are: the McBain Building, which served as the Shanghai offices of Royal Dutch Shell and Asiatic Petroleum Company; the Great Northern Telegraph Corporation Building, home of the Great Northern Telegraph Company and later home of the first telephone switchboard in Shanghai; the HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) Building, which housed the bank of the same name (in spite of its name, it was strictly a British bank, founded by a Scot by the name of Thomas Sutherland); the Shanghai Club, the primary social club for British expats living in Shanghai during the period; the Customs House, a British structure that was built on the site of a former Chinese-style customs house - the British variant had a made-in-England clock-and-bell tower that mimicked Big Ben; the Glen Line Building, which housed the offices of Glen Line Eastern Agencies, a Scottish shipping company; and the Consulate-General of the United Kingdom, which needs no further elaboration.

Many of these grandiose structures of a byegone era were modified or allowed to fall into disrepair after the emergence of the PRC, but after China's opening to the West, thanks to the efforts of U.S. President Richard Nixon and his famous and flamboyant Foreign Minister (Secretary of State), Henry Kissinger, the government of the PRC took steps to have the grandiose buildings of the Bund restored to their heyday glory. Although the buildings themselves have been restored, most of course serve a different purpose today than they originally did, since many, if not most, of the original enterprises no longer exist (the city of Shanghai and the British bank, HSBC, which of course still exists, could not agree on a price when the restoration of the old HSBC Building was completed in the early 1990s). For example, many of the insurance buildings and shipping houses, etc. now serve as hotels.

As well, due to severe flooding in the 1970s and 1980s, it was decided to build a new levee, or embankment, to contain the Huangpu River, such that today the riverfront has been dramatically altered compared to the past. Moreover, to accomodate increasing traffic, much of the park area alongside the the Bund has had to give way to a widened thoroughfare, while most of the wharves that belonged to the riverfront have also long since disappeared, although a few remain, offering pleasure cruises for nostalgia-hungering tourists. The change in the Bund's riverfront is not necessarily for the bad, however, as the top of the new embankment is in the form of a promenade with special viewing balconies that project outward in the direction of the river, in the style of a bay window, and offer an excellent view of the Huangpu River below as well as a view of the immediate continuation of the city of Shanghai on the river's opposite bank.