At 8.30am on a Sunday morning in late spring, Nanjing East Road metro station is crammed. As the swathe of hand-holding couples, extended families and day-trippers pushes outward into the sunshine, whistle-toting police ensure continued movement.
Wedged into the middle of this mass, I look up and spot the green copper dome of the Peace Hotel. So, too, does everyone around me and, in unison, digital cameras are raised to the sky. Then, Nanjing Road opens onto the Bund, and the sense of anticipation heightens.
Sunday 28 March 2010 was a special day for Shanghai. After three years of disruptive, dirty and disorienting re-landscaping, the Bund – Shanghai’s signature strip of historic riverfront architecture – was reopened. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to participate in this momentous occasion.
Though mostly designed by foreign architects during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when overseas powers dominated Shanghai, the Bund’s allure is enduring.
‘The Bund is an engineering and architectural marvel designed to be adored. It will always remain Shanghai’s most potent landmark,’ says Peter Hibbard MBE, a Shanghai-based historian and author of The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West and the forthcoming Peace At The Cathay: A Century of International Hospitality on The Bund.
The physical impact of the Bund – taken from a Hindi word meaning ‘embankment’, though officially called Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu, and colloquially branded ‘Waitan,’ (meaning ‘outer beach’) – is multi-faceted.
‘For tourists arriving on cruise liners, today as of yesteryear, it represents their first taste of China, where modern skyscraper Shanghai is cast in the background,’ Hibbard adds. ‘For the masses, it’s the place to promenade and for the élite the place to indulge in life’s finer pleasures in a city besotted by glitz and glamour.’
Historically, the Bund marks the spot where Shanghai (which translates as ‘above the sea’) grew from a small settlement in the early 19th century into today’s globalised mega-city of 19 million people. The place where wooden barges became ocean-going cruise liners, and street-side food carts turned into restaurants by Michelin-starred chefs. The Bund represented Shanghai’s theatre of dreams, it’s cradle of worldly possibility.
Nice article for travellers those want to visit Shanghai, China. I heard Shanghai is very famous place for business.
Thank you Gary Bowerman for your beautiful report.
Write about Nepal also, here are alot of things for adventure lover travellers