The Bund

The Bund is one of the most recognizable architectural symbols of Shanghai. "Bund" derives from an Anglo-Indian word for an embankment along a muddy waterfront and that is what it was in the beginning when the first British company opened a office there in 1846. Located on the west bank of a bend in the Huangpu River and just south of Suzhou Creek, the Bund became the site of some of the earliest foreign settlements after Shanghai was opened as one of five "Treaty Ports" in the Treaty of Nanjing that ended the Opium War in 1842. Because of its proximity to the Yangtze River--the path into central China, Shanghai grew rapidly as the economic centre of foreign interests.

Scene along the Huanpu River



Pearl Tower



Clock tower along the Bund