The North Bund

Originally posted 23rd January, 2015 Today’s task was relatively simple – go and get the classic picture of Shanghai to head up my blog. But before that we were supposed to go and open a Chinese bank account, but we failed at the first hurdle and anyway the time that Richard had set aside for the task was way too ambitious according to those in his office, who reckoned that at least half a day will be needed to overcome all the bureaucratic hurdles, more of that later, no doubt.

So I took the metro to the north shore of the Suzhou Creek a small river that wends it way eastwards through northern central Shanghai and found a very pleasant elevated walkway that took me all the way along the river bank to the Waibaidu Bridge, the oldest steel bridge in the country, constructed in the American style in 1856. Overlooking the bridge are two landmark buildings the Art Deco edifice of the Broadway Mansions and the Astor House Hotel built nearly a century earlier. The pleasant Suszhou Creek feeds into the Huangpu River. This is much wider than the

Thames in London, but is itself only a small tributary of the mighty Yangtze River that reaches the Sea just north-east of here. Shanghai is essentially built on a river delta – the rivers have been redirected so that Shanghai does in fact have access to the Yangtze – and it is all on a huge scale. I got some so-so pictures of the classic Pudong scene – the air had cleared since the morning when I had been very pessimistic about succeeding in my task as the air quality had been too poor. The haze had lifted somewhat and the pictures would do for now. This small area marks the beginning of what Shanghai has grown into today. Here was the start of Shanghai’s development from a small fishing village into a foreign (initially British) territory in the British concession on the Bund. Around this spot various foreign powers owned land and we foreigners threw our weight around – we could cross the Waibaidu Bridge on credit, the Chinese could not.

The Old British Consulate Building was rebuilt in 1873 after a fire The local park, now known as Huangpu's Park, had a sign up in colonial days saying “No dogs or Chinese allowed”. The old British Consulate building (1852) is just across the road, as is the Union Church and the Shanghai Rowing Club.

Many of the old Warehouses are still standing and now house very upmarket shops and antique houses such as Christie’s and the area is used as the backdrop for many a fashion shoot. On the south side of the Suzhou creek there is a stark monument to the People’s Heroes who liberated Shanghai during the communist revolution. It sits atop a very small interesting museum about the history of the area. The museum covers the role of the west in the development of Shanghai from the small fishing village it once was, in both its glory and its shame. Old photographs show for example Chinese workers with their Manchurian queues (pigtails) imposed on the Han Chinese by their Manchurian Qing Dynasty masters and an opium ship sitting at the dock side belonging to Jardine Matheson, the firm that did much to force open trade with China.