The Bund, Shanghai 上海外滩

Hello everyone, and welcome to Shanghai! Today I'll be walking you along the western bank of the Huangpu River, taking you through the route from Shiliupu Wharf to Bund 18, the Asia Building, the Shanghai Club, the HSBC Building, the Customs House, the Peace Hotel, Chen Yi Square, the Monument to the People's Heroes, Waibaidu Bridge, and finally the Bund Source. Together, we'll travel through this 1.5-kilometre stretch of history — a "Gallery of International Architecture" that compresses roughly 180 years of China's modern story into a single riverside walk.

Let's start with a little background on the Bund. The name itself goes back to the Qing dynasty — "Bund" referred to the mudflats along the Huangpu River just outside the old city walls of Shanghai County. "Wai" means outside the city; "tan" means the riverbank mudflats. When Shanghai opened as a treaty port in 1843, British, French, and American settlers carved out their concessions along these mudflats. Banks, trading houses, chambers of commerce, and clubs went up one after another, and by the 1920s and 30s, barely two kilometres of riverfront was lined with 52 buildings representing the world's major architectural traditions. The Bund became the largest financial centre in the Far East — known as "the Wall Street of the East."

The Bund is unlike every other attraction you've visited — there's no entrance gate, no ticket, and it's open around the clock, because it's simply a city street. You can come and go whenever you like. But if you just walk past without engaging, you're missing everything. I encourage you to follow me and read through this stretch of history layer by layer — like reading a novel written in stone.

We're now standing at the southernmost starting point of the Bund — Shiliupu Wharf. The name "Shiliupu" has been around since the Qing dynasty. Back then, Shanghai County managed the riverfront by dividing it into more than twenty sections called "pu," and this area was Number Sixteen — so it was called Shiliupu.

After the Opium War, foreign merchant ships came thundering into the Huangpu River, and Shiliupu became the busiest passenger terminal in all of China.

Here's a figure to put it in perspective: during the Republican era, Shiliupu received over ten million visitors a year, at a time when Shanghai's entire population was only about three million. People from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Guangdong, and Fujian — they all took a boat, stepped off onto this gangway, and set foot in Shanghai for the very first time. Many of them never left. So for generations of Shanghainese, "Shiliupu" isn't just a place name — it's the first coordinate of their life in this city.

Take a look across the river toward Lujiazui in Pudong. A hundred years ago, that was all farmland and makeshift housing. Now it's China's densest cluster of skyscrapers: Shanghai Tower at 632 metres tall, the second tallest building in the world; and beside it Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center, which Shanghainese jokingly call "the kitchen trio" — Jin Mao looks like a syringe, the World Financial Center like a bottle opener, and Shanghai Tower like a hand mixer. But behind that joke is a fact: from Shiliupu to Lujiazui, separated by just a few hundred metres of river, China leapt in a hundred years from the age of steam-powered ships all the way to a building 632 metres in the air. That's what "compressed time" means.

Alright, let's say goodbye to Shiliupu and head north along the Bund.

On your right — Number 18 Zhongshan East Road Number 1. This is Bund 18. Completed in 1923, it was originally the Shanghai headquarters of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China — the institution we know today as Standard Chartered Bank. Designed by the British firm Palmer and Turner in a Neoclassical style. Look at those columns running across the second and third floors — notice the tops, where two rings of spiral scrolls curl upward. That's the Ionic order, the column style ancient Greece reserved for goddesses, chosen for its elegance.

The most remarkable story connected to this building happened in 2002. By that point it had fallen into serious disrepair and was nearly lost. A Taiwanese entrepreneur purchased the entire building, then brought in a Venetian architectural restoration team from Italy who approached the work like surgery, stripping it back layer by layer to uncover what lay underneath. Their first task was to chip away concrete that had been plastered over the original surfaces, revealing the 1919 mosaic floor tiles beneath. Then came the Carrara marble columns from Italy and the stained-glass dome. In 2006, the project was awarded the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for Cultural Heritage Conservation.

If you have time to step inside, just look up at the dome. During the day, sunlight filters through the coloured glass and scatters patches of blue, red, and gold across the floor below. Everything people mean when they talk about "blending East and West with intelligence" is written right there on that ceiling.

Just ahead on your right — Number 1 Zhongshan East Road Number 1. The Asia Building. Completed in 1916, it was the tallest building on the Bund when it was built, which earned it the title of "the Bund's premier building." Look closely at the secret of this building's floor plan: it isn't a simple rectangle — it's a hollow square, with the centre cut away to create a courtyard. That way every room on every floor gets light from two sides. Designers over a century ago already understood that a building needs to breathe.

Where did the name "Asia" come from? From the company that moved in — the Asiatic Petroleum Company, which at the time held a monopoly over China's entire kerosene market. What does "monopoly" mean here? Every drop of kerosene that every household in China burned for light had to be bought from this one company. It's roughly equivalent to all electricity today belonging to a single corporation. Monopoly profits on that scale were enormous — large enough to justify occupying the prime address of Number 1 on the Bund.

Today the building is home to the Jiushi International Arts Centre — inside you'll find the Fosun Foundation and a space for the international auction house Christie's. A hundred years ago it sold oil; today it sells art. The water of the Huangpu River hasn't changed, but the story this building tells has transformed completely.

Look to your right — the building with six massive white columns. Number 2 Zhongshan East Road Number 1. This is the former Shanghai Club, now the Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund. "Club" was translated into Chinese as "zong hui," meaning general assembly. Completed in 1909, this was historically the first building on the Bund to use reinforced concrete construction. Those six columns at the main entrance are Ionic — look at the two spiral scrolls at the top of each one, carved entirely by hand. Shanghainese have a word for a certain effortless refinement: "qiaodiao." You're looking at it right now.

Inside was a 34-metre-long bar counter made from black-and-white marble, celebrated at the time as "the longest bar in the Far East." Thirty-four metres — about the length of a railway carriage. Picture it: a hundred years ago, gentlemen lined up along this bar, swirling their whisky, discussing what? The price of silk, cotton, opium, the sterling exchange rate. The wealth intelligence of the entire Far East passed from mouth to ear along this counter.

After 1949 the building was renamed the Dongfeng Hotel. Shanghai's very first KFC opened here. Sit with that image for a moment — fashionable young people eating fried chicken beneath a century-old European-style dome. This is Shanghai's most extraordinary quality: it has never cared about mixing incompatible things together, and somewhere in the mixing, it produces its own unmistakable style.

Now the building has returned to its original calling — the Waldorf Astoria. Walk into the lobby and you'll find the black-and-white marble and the hand-carved staircase banisters exactly as they were a hundred years ago.

This next building is the one I most recommend you take a good look at — Number 12 Zhongshan East Road Number 1, the former HSBC Building. Completed in 1923, it was once described as "the most magnificent building between the Suez Canal and the Bering Strait." Full steel-frame construction, every piece of marble quarried in Italy, shipped over, and carved on site. A hundred years on, look at the colour of the stone on the outer walls — the wind and rain of the Huangpu River have left almost no mark on it. That's what Italian stone is made of.

The real showpiece is inside. Most of the time it isn't open to the public, so I'll paint the picture for you — keep it in your mind. On the dome ceiling of the octagonal banking hall hangs a monumental mosaic mural 15 metres in diameter, covering roughly 200 square metres, titled "All Under Heaven Are Brothers." Italian craftsmen spent two years placing millions of pieces of coloured glass and metal tessera to depict eight cities: Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Bangkok, and Calcutta. At the very centre, the sun god drives his chariot across the sky. When you stand beneath that dome and look up, one thought comes to you clearly — "the whole of human civilisation is above my head."

Why would a bank spend that kind of money on something customers see only by looking up? It's a brilliant piece of logic: you come in to deposit your money, you glance upward, and you see the pinnacle of human civilisation gathered in one place. Can you possibly doubt that this bank is trustworthy? Architecture is the highest-order investment in the cost of trust.

Photography tip: a slightly right-of-centre angle from the front lets you capture both the dome silhouette and the full row of columns. Between four and five-thirty in the afternoon, the facade turns golden in the evening light.

Right next door — the Customs House. You'll know it the moment you spot the clock. Completed in 1927, the clock tower rises 79 metres, deliberately built a notch taller than the HSBC Building next to it. That was a classic "architectural competition" on the Bund: you go up six metres, I'll go up eight. But the clock is today's real star.

It shares the same British clockmaker's mechanism as Big Ben in London. Each of the four clock faces measures 5.4 metres in diameter — one on every side of the tower. On New Year's Day 1928 it struck for the first time, playing the British Westminster Quarters. Old Shanghainese didn't say "what time is it" — they said "how many times has the Customs clock rung." The whole city kept time by it.

There's a person I want to tell you about — Wei Yunsi, the clock keeper. From 1991 onwards, he climbed that near-vertical iron ladder up to the clock tower every single day to wind the mechanism, calibrate it, and carry out maintenance. For over thirty years, without a single break. In his hands, this clock has never run more than two seconds off. You're facing a precision machine that has been chiming faithfully through countless hours, kept alive by one person working in quiet, unseen dedication. That is Shanghai's true character — you get the job done properly, whether anyone is watching or not.

The clock now plays "The East Is Red" on the hour. When it strikes, the river wind carries the sound across the Huangpu to the opposite bank. If you happen to be passing at the top of the hour, stop and listen — one stroke at a time. Every chime is a hundred years.

Coming up — the one that's impossible to miss. The dark green roof. That's the Peace Hotel. Completed in 1929, it was originally called Sassoon House. The Sassoon family — wealthy British-Jewish merchants who made their fortune in the opium trade — at their peak owned a quarter of Shanghai's real estate. This building was the Sassoon family's crowning achievement: 77 metres tall, the tallest structure in all of Shanghai, a masterpiece of Art Deco architecture.

Three details to hold onto. First, the colour: most buildings on the Bund are grey-white, but this one is Indian red stone, a deep reddish hue. Against Shanghai's grey winter skies, that red stands out like a silk ribbon tied along the river. Second, the roof: a deep green pyramidal copper dome — copper oxidises continuously, its colour deepening slowly with the years. The green you're seeing now took a full hundred years to develop. Third, the jazz band: the veteran jazz ensemble on the ground floor has an average age of over seventy and has been playing here for more than forty years. Every evening when the saxophone starts up, you understand exactly what "a living legend" means.

The history of this building is a miniature version of Shanghai's history. Charlie Chaplin stayed here and called it "the most fashionable place to stay in the Orient." After 1949 it was renamed the Peace Hotel, where Premier Zhou Enlai received the French prime minister in the ninth-floor suite, and the American table tennis team also stayed here — the signal that launched the era of Ping-Pong Diplomacy went out from this lobby. If you've seen the television series "Blossoms Shanghai" in recent years: the main character's penthouse suite is right here, with the Bund and the Huangpu River outside the window. One building, four eras, four entirely different stories.

Photography tip: stand diagonally across the street to capture the relationship between the pyramidal copper dome and the horizontal roofline of the international architecture ensemble below. After dark, the lit dome glows as a deep, luminous green.

The large square just ahead is Chen Yi Square. The bronze statue at the centre — 9 metres tall — is Chen Yi, the first mayor of Shanghai under the People's Republic of China. In May 1949, Chen Yi led the People's Liberation Army into Shanghai and took over the city.

You may not know much about Chen Yi's relationship with Shanghai. The city came through the fighting largely undamaged, and a major reason for that was the order Chen Yi and the PLA issued at the time: "catch the mouse without breaking the china shop." Better to sustain more casualties among your own soldiers than to destroy this world-famous city. On 28 May 1949, Chen Yi walked into the old municipal government building beside the Bund and received the keys to the great city of Shanghai. At that moment, the average life expectancy in Shanghai was under 35 years. In his three years as mayor, industrial output quadrupled. That is the real first line of what people call "the Shanghai legend."

The square itself is the finest viewpoint on the entire Bund. Stand beside the statue and look north — the three silver columns of the Monument to the People's Heroes rise into the sky. Look south — the full facade of the international architecture ensemble unfolds like an open scroll. Look straight across the river — the Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Shanghai Tower line up one after another. Whether you use a phone or a camera, from this single spot you already have three completely different visions of Shanghai.

Walk twenty or thirty metres south of Chen Yi Square and you'll see a bull — the Bund Bull. Unveiled during the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, it was created by the same artist as the famous Charging Bull on Wall Street in New York: Italian-American sculptor Arturo Di Modica. This bull weighs 2.5 tonnes, and its posture is younger and more energetic than its Wall Street counterpart. Its head points in the direction of Lujiazui.

Why a bull? In financial culture, a bull represents a bull market — a rising market. Wall Street has one, so the Bund needed one too. But more importantly, consider the direction it's facing: its horns point straight toward Shanghai Tower across the river. In 1884 the British built a racecourse here; in 1923 HSBC raised its financial empire; in the 1990s Pudong's development began; in 2016 Shanghai Tower was topped out. Through all those years, the Bund never once stopped its drive to go higher. This bull embodies that spirit — the instinct that never looks back.

There are always crowds around it, so I'd suggest waiting ten to fifteen minutes — there's usually a window when it clears. Rest your hand on one of the horns and angle from below, with Shanghai Tower on the opposite bank in the frame.

Further north, three silver columns thrust straight up into the sky — the Monument to the People's Heroes of Shanghai. Completed in 1994, each column stands 60 metres tall. The designer's intention is unmistakable: three columns representing all who gave their lives for Shanghai's liberation and national independence across three defining chapters of modern Chinese history — the Opium War, the May Fourth Movement, and the War of Liberation.

This monument took 45 years to build from conception to completion. The idea was first raised in 1949 by Chen Yi himself — he said: "Shanghai has been liberated; we must erect a memorial for those who came before us." But for various reasons it was delayed decade after decade, and it was only on 27 May 1994 — the 45th anniversary of Shanghai's liberation — that it was finally finished. Think about this: when Chen Yi said those words in 1949, he could not have known that forty-five years later, he too would be standing on the Bund — in the form of that bronze statue we just visited — looking across at this monument.

Stand at the base of the monument and look south — Shiliupu Wharf is at the far end; look north — Waibaidu Bridge; to your left, Suzhou Creek flows into the Huangpu River. Three waterways meet here, three columns rise to the sky. On the windiest days, standing at the centre of the monument's base, you can hear both rivers at once — and they sound different from each other.

The bridge just ahead is Waibaidu Bridge. Built in 1907, it is China's first all-steel riveted bridge — not a single weld, held together entirely by rivets driven in one by one. Look at the dense rows of round bumps along the bridge's frame — every one of them is a hand-driven rivet, and after more than a hundred and ten years, not one has come loose.

Why is it called "Baidu Bridge" — the "free crossing bridge"? During the Xianfeng period of the Qing dynasty, the first bridge at this site was a wooden one that charged a toll to cross. Later, the Public Works Department of the International Settlement built a new iron bridge alongside it and announced: this one is free — no charge. Shanghainese used the word "bai" to mean "for free," as in "crossing for nothing." So "Waibaidu Bridge" literally means "the bridge near the Bund where you cross for free." It's a commoner's name, not one bestowed by an emperor — the people gave it that name themselves.

This bridge has appeared in more films than perhaps any other landmark in Shanghai. In Lou Ye's "Suzhou River," Zhou Xun rides the back of a motorbike and sweeps across this bridge in a single frame. In Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution," Tang Wei walks from the north end to the south, with the Suzhou River behind her in grey-white tones. If you stand at the midpoint of the bridge and look east, the river flows beneath your feet into the Huangpu, the century-old international architecture ensemble is on your left, and the Pudong skyscrapers rise on your right. This is the only spot in all of Shanghai where you can see three different eras at once.

Photography tip: from the northern end, shoot down along the bridge to capture the rivet details — it's quieter in the early morning. After dark the bridge is lit in warm amber, and its steel framework casts a reflection on the water like a latticed palace.

Once we cross Waibaidu Bridge, we arrive at the true origin of the Bund — the Bund Source, or Waitanyuan. "Source" here carries a double meaning: it's where the two rivers meet, and it's where time begins. On your right is that red brick building completed in 1873 — the former British Consulate General, the oldest surviving structure on the Bund. Exposed red brick walls, a colonnaded arcade with curved arched openings. Notice that it doesn't carry the heavy "official authority" of a typical government building? It feels less like a consulate and more like an English country estate far from London. That's the hallmark of colonial veranda architecture — a blend of tropical ventilation and British aesthetics.

Beside it, the Gothic church with the pointed spire — the Union Church, built in 1886. Red brick tower, rose window. In 2007 a fire destroyed most of its roof, and when the time came to restore it, a clever decision was made: preserve the traces of the fire. New materials were placed over the charred wooden beams rather than replacing them. So what you're looking at today is both the 1886 church and a space reborn in 2007 at the same time.

The Bund Source is the quietest corner of the entire Bund. While the crowds press shoulder to shoulder on the main promenade, you can turn into Yuanmingyuan Road and find nothing but plane trees overhead and coffee shops and galleries all around — the old Royal Asiatic Society building has become the Rockbund Art Museum, and the Zhenguang Building has become a Shanghai-Hong Kong banking history exhibition hall. There are fewer people here. Sit on the lawn with a coffee, watch the cars and pedestrians flow across Waibaidu Bridge in front of you, and you'll understand what it means to find true solitude in the heart of a city.

That's it, everyone. We've walked from Shiliupu to the Bund Source — about 1.5 kilometres from south to north. It's not a long road, but it took 180 years to walk — from the cannon fire of the Opium War to the light shows over Lujiazui tonight.

Three things to take away with you from today:

First, the Bund is not decoration. Every building here is a note left in Shanghai by a nation that once ruled a piece of the world. The British left their banks, the French left their plane trees, and the Chinese people left behind the wisdom of preserving all of it and putting it to use again.

Second, the buildings on the Bund are not dead. They have gone from "taipan clubs" to "general trade union offices," from "trading-house warehouses" to "art museums." The buildings haven't changed; the people looking at them have. That shift itself is the story of China's modern history.

Third, if you can only carry one image away from today — I suggest you come back to the entrance of the Peace Hotel at dusk, just as the Customs House clock strikes the hour, the setting sun turns the international architecture ensemble gold, and the lights of Lujiazui across the river are just switching on. At that moment, you'll find that the world's yesterday and tomorrow are converging right there on the stretch of river in front of you.

If there's a particular building you'd like to explore more, or you'd like to find a coffee or come back for the night views, just let me know — the Bund is always lit.