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Shanghai 2009
Tuesday, 18 August 2009 05:08 Written by Nishita Mehta-Jasani
Following the Treaty of Nanjing that concluded the first Opium War in 1842, this area at the intersection of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek was established as a British settlement and was named The Bund (derived from the Sanskrit word for ‘embankment’ or ‘dam’). The word ‘Bund’ has now become a name for the entire river bank stretch known as the waitan in Chinese, corresponding to the two sides of Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu 中山东一路. By the turn of the 20th century, the Bund had become the richest and most prosperous part of Shanghai and had some of Asia’s grandest buildings, often finished with the finest Italian marble. The area had been transformed into a major center for banking and was known as the “Wall Street of Asia”. Many of its buildings were also among the world’s tallest at some point in their history.During the 1920s and ‘30s the continuous influx of wealth tempted the city into a wild multitude of vices, elegant modes of corruption and a generalized decadence. Much of the associated activity took place around the Bund. Victor Sassoon, a cosmopolitan Baghdadi Jew from Bombay (Mumbai), held outrageous themed parties in his Cathay Hotel. Military officers and business adventurers gathered around the exclusive Shanghai Club’s Long Bar or attended opera performances by White Russian artists (who had fled to Shanghai to escape the consequences of the 1918 Bolshevik revolution). The city’s fabulous buildings, technological miracles, commercial vitality, swinging ballrooms, opium parlors and wanton living earned it a dazzling but ambivalent reputation as both the ‘Whore of the East’ and the ‘Paris of the Orient’. In 1937, the city’s ‘Golden Age’ of delirious capitalism came to an end when Japanese forces launched an all-out assault against China. Frock-coats gave way to military uniforms, marking the beginning of a period of drabness, austere seriousness and earnest moral purpose that continued uninterupted through the Communist victory in 1949. The early years of Communist Shanghai were not conducive to cosmpolitan commercialism and most foreign businesses abandoned the Bund to the New China. The British flags came down and the Bund’s buildings became government offices. Some were even used as factories. Fortunately, most have retained their original character with interiors and facades surviving. Following reform and opening, in 1996 the government moved out and the Bund reopened to banks and businesses – now predominantly domestic ones -- marking the start of a new era on the Bund. Today the Bund is seeing a revival of its past energy and has become a showcase for the uncompromising cosmopolitan lifestyle once again. While many of the old waterfront buildings are still occupied by offices and banks, some have been transformed into chic, super-stylish concept buildings and house some of Shanghai’s trendiest restaurants, bars, art galleries, fashion houses and spas. Tango dancing, top-hats, tailcoats and gentlemen clubs from the pre-communist era have been replaced by the thumping beats, haute couture, fine dining, champagne and cigars of the new millennium. The Bund Parade by the numbers No. 1: The McBain Building 亚细亚大楼 (Moorhead and Halse, 1916) was built as the Shanghai headquarters of shipping magnate George McBain (owner of the first private aircraft in Shanghai). The building was initially constructed with seven stories according to a severe but eclectic classical design, including Roman arches, Ionic columns and baroque pillars. An eighth story was added in 1939. From 1917 it was occupied by the Asiatic Petroleum Company (predecessor to the Shell Oil Company). During the postcolonial era, the building has been home to the Shanghai Metallurgy Design Institute, a real estate company, a silk company and the China Pacific Insurance Company. No. 2: The Shanghai Club 上海总会 (Moorhead and Halse, 1910) was designed by T. Tarrant of London in English Renaissance style, replacing a three-story brick building dating from 1864. The elaborate new structure, incorporating white columns, baroque attic windows and turrets, was equipped with elevators and electrical chandelier lighting. Membership of the Shanghai Club was predominantly British and restricted to the business and administrative elite, with women prohibited except on special occasions. The building’s most celebrated feature was its granite and mahogany Long Bar, stretching for almost 34 meters in its longest dimension and almost 46 meters in total, unmatched by any other in the world. Subsequent occupants of the building included the International Seamen's Club (from 1956) and the Dongfeng Hotel (from 1971). Between 1990 and ‘96 it housed the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Shanghai, but since then the building has remained unoccupied, gutted and closed to the public. No. 3: The Union Insurance Company Building 有利大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1916) was constructed in Renaissance style, with lavish detailing and one elegantly turreted corner. The building has been occupied by insurance banking businesses, then government bureaux (after 1949). In the new millennium it has become a major center of Bund renovation, following a major reconstruction by Michael Graves (completed in 2004). It has been reborn as a high-end retail, restaurant and culture complex that is home to the only Evian Spa outside France as well as the China showcase store of Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss. Today’s Three on the Bund 外滩三号 contains several of the city’s most highly regarded dining spots, including the eponymous restaurants of Jean Georges 让乔治西餐厅 Vongerichten (fourth floor) and David Laris 陆唯轩 (sixth floor), the Whampoa Club 黄浦会 (fifth floor) and New Heights新视角餐厅酒廊 (seventh floor terrace). The Shanghai Gallery of Art沪申画廊, located on the third floor, has carved out an impressive reputation for staging thoughtful exhibitions of Chinese and International contemporary art. Enter from Guangdong Lu. No. 5: The Nisshin Kisen Kaisha Building日清大楼 (Lester Johnson and Morriss, 1921) served originally as the headquarters of the Japanese Nishin Navigation Company. The reinforced concrete building was designed in relatively austere Beaux-Arts style, with deeply recessed windows. Following Japanese defeat in 1945, the company’s China assets were nationalized and the building became the headquarters of the Shanghai Haipeng Company, later renamed the Huaxia Bank. The address has been rebranded since 1999 by Bund revival pioneer Michelle Garnaut, whose seventh-floor M on the Bund 米氏西餐厅 restaurant and Glamour Bar 魅力酒吧 have won a niche among the city’s best-known entertainment spots. M on the Bund hosts the influential Shanghai Literary Festival each year. Other notable tenants include Design Republic 设计共和 (ground floor) and the Oasis Spa (fifth floor). Enter from Guangdong Lu. No. 6: The Russell & Co. Building中国通商银行大楼 (Morrison & Gratton, 1881), designed in Victorian Gothic style, is one of only two 19th century buildings surviving on the Bund. After the failure of Boston trading house Russell & Co. in 1891, the building became the premises of the British P&O Banking Corporation, which was succeeded in turn by the Imperial Bank of China (ancestor of the Commercial Bank of China). Under Art Deco influence, the building was simplified and stripped of its red brick façade in the 1930s. Major renovations completed in 2006 have transformed the building once again, restoring much of its original character and adding it to the growing list of Bund fashion and leisure venues. Today it hosts a Dolce & Gabbana store, a Martini bar and Japanese restaurant/bar Suntory and Sun with Aqua东京和食. No. 7: The Great Northern Telegraph Company Building 电报大楼; (Atkinson & Dallas, 1901) served as Shanghai headquarters to the Danish company responsible for the telegraphic and telephonic modernization of the city from the 1880s. Naturally enough, this beautifully-proportioned neoclassical building was a technological pioneer, containing the city’s first switchboard. Today it houses the Bangkok Bank and the Consulate of Thailand. No. 9: The China Merchants Steamship Company Building 旗昌洋行大楼(Atkinson & Dallas, 1901) provides considerable material for historical confusion. It was based on the thorough renovation of an earlier building of uncertain provenance that was owned by Russell & Co. (occupant of Bund No. 6 from 1881). Upon acquisition of this building in 1877, the China Merchants Steamship Company became the first Chinese company to install itself on the Bund. After 1949, the Shanghai harbor master was based in the building. More recently, the British Council was based there. Since 2005 it has been a confident contributor to the new Bund, housing the Shanghai flagship store of superstar Taiwan fashion designer Shiatzy Chen 夏姿. No. 12: The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation Building 汇丰银行大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1923) was designed to dominate the Bund, radiating the impregnable economic confidence proper to the premier financial institution of the International Settlement and the largest in East Asia at that time. It was constructed in imperious, ornamentally-restrained neoclassical style, with massive columns and huge dome, using the finest Italian marble, inlays, carvings and bronze work. The finished building was regarded as the most glorious edifice to be found anywhere between the Suez Canal and the Bering Strait, the crowning achievement of architects Palmer and Turner. The Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) occupied the building until 1949, when it became the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai and (from 1955-95) of the Municipal Government. Today it houses the Pudong Development Bank (as well as the Norwegian and Spanish Consulates). HSBC was invited to return to the premises in the 1990s, but declined to do so. The entrance ceiling of the bank is decorated with mosaic murals symbolically representing the world’s greatest financial centers of the time: Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, New York, Tokyo, Bangkok, Paris and Calcutta. These mosaics were spared the ravages of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) by a resourceful employee, who ordered them concealed beneath a layer of plaster (they were rediscovered in 1997). The bank’s dark bronze lions (cast in Western, realist style) underwent surprising wartime adventures. Stolen by the Japanese in 1941, they were discovered by the American occupation forces in Yokohama after the war, returned to Shanghai in 1961 and placed in the Shanghai History Museum. The lions guarding the building today are replicas, installed in 1997. A coffee shop can be found on the second floor.
No. 14: The Bank of Communications Building 交通银行大楼 (CH Gonda, 1948) was the last member of the Bund parade to be completed. Architect CH Gonda was a master of the high-modernist Art Deco style (previously incarnated in his Cathay and Capitol cinema buildings). His eight-story Bund building, with its symmetry, strong vertical lines, stepped façade, nautical motifs and imposing black marble entrance, makes a striking contribution to the city’s rich Art Deco legacy. The Bank of Communications was founded in 1908 and opened a Shnaghai branch in the same year. It was one of the four oldest Chinese banks, specialized in communications and transportation investments. It was strengthened by the absoption of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank after Germany’s defeat in WWI. The building is now used by the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions and the Bank of Shanghai. It is closed to the public. No. 15: The Russo-Asiatic Bank Building华俄道胜银行大楼 (Heinrich Becker, 1902) was designed in Italian Renaissance style, adding an eclectic element to the Bund parade. It was among the first tile-cladded buildings in the city and among the most technologically advanced, with an elevator, installed electric generator, ceiling fans and electrical connections at every desk. The exterior, richly decorated with carvings based on Western mythological themes, suffered significant damage during the Cultural Revolution. The Russo-Asiatic Bank, founded in 1896, was the first joint-venture bank in China (with Chinese, Russian and French investors). It failed in 1926 and was acquired by the Central Bank of China. Today the building houses the Chinese Foreign Exchange and Trade Center and Shanghai Space Aeronautics Bureau. It is closed to the public. No. 16: The Bank of Taiwan Building台湾银行大楼 (Lester Johnson and Moriss, 1926) combines Japanese, Chinese and Western elements. Taiwan was under Japanese rule from 1895-1945 and the Bank of Taiwan was a Japanese Banking venture, established in 1899 to support trade throughout Asia. The architecture is a distinctively Asian variant of Western neoclassicism, incorporating tall columns and some Art Deco elements. The building is now the China Merchants Bank. No. 17: The North China Daily News Building字林西报大楼 (Lester Johnson and Moriss, 1924) was the tallest on the Bund upon completion. This elegant nine-story Beaux-Arts neoclassical building integrates Baroque towers, Renaissance relief sculpture and classical columns into a modern reinforced-concrete structure. The seven lowest stories are faced with granite. Two stone goddesses who originally flanked the marble entrance were lost to the Cultural Revolution. The building housed the principal newspaper of English-speaking colonial Shanghai on its first, fifth and sixth stories. Another early tenant was the American Underwriters Savings Bank, ancestor of the AIA that occupies the building today.
No. 19: The Palace Hotel汇中饭店 (W Scott, 1909) was built in two stages, with the first completed in 1907. The present six-story brick building, designed predominantly in English style with Italianate features and Baroque towers, was built by the Sassoons as a replacement for the three-story Central Hotel. It was one of the first hotels in Shanghai and one of the most magnificent in Asia at the time, receiving many distinguished guests (including China’s freshly-inaugurated first republican president, Sun Yat-sen, in December 1911). A rooftop ornamental garden, with pavilions, was destroyed by a fire in 1914. The building became the South Wing of the Peace Hotel和平饭店in 1965.
No. 23: The Bank of China Building 中国银行大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1941) represents a highly influential Chinese inflection of modernist architecture. Designed by Lu Qianshou under Palmer and Turner, it masterfully originates a lineage of Art Deco with Chinese characteristics that has been widely proliferated since. The building has a steel frame construction covered with Jinshan stone, Chinese ornamentation and an upwardly-curved Chinese roof that stands out distinctively on the Bund parade. It was commissioned by KMT finance minister TV Song (Song Ziwei), with instructions that it was to be the tallest building on the Bund. The ensuing architectural competition with the Cathay Hotel led to the addition of a small supplementary tower to the top of the latter, still easily visible today. The Bank of China, which has occupied the building continuously since it was completed, was originally the household bank of the Qing family and was known as the Qing Bank. It acquired its present name in 1912, after the 1911 republican revolution. No. 24: The Yokohama Specie Bank Building横滨正金银行大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1924) was designed in Beaux Arts neoclassical style as a home for the foreign investment organ of the Japanese government and the most important financial intermediary for Sino-Japanese trade in the early 20th century. The six-story building is faced with granite, roughened on the first floor, with twin Ionic columns rising above the entrance. The Yokohama Specie Bank bought the site in 1920, replacing an earlier (Sassoon) building. Following WWII, the Bank of China appropriated the building to house the Central Bank of China. The building was delicately restored by Joseph Wong in 2001. Today it houses the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. No. 26: The Yangtze Insurance Building扬子大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1920) is distinguished by the miniature Ionic columns on the sixth floor, establishing thematic unity with the building’s Bund neighbors through a vestigial classical motif that verges on the gently comic. The building is constructed in reinforced concrete with a granite veneer, roughened on the first two floors. The roof line employs darker granite and provided luxury apartments. The Yangtze Water and Fire Insurance Company, founded in 1863, occupied the ground floor. Other occupants have included the Danish Consulate, the Mercantile Bank of India, the offices of Jardine, Matheson & Co and the Italian Chamber of Commerce. No. 27: The Jardine Matheson and Company Building 怡和洋行大楼(Stewardson and Spence, 1922) was the headquarters of Shanghai’s most profitable firm and enthusiastic opium trader. It was also known as the Ewo Building, named after William Jardine’s Guangzhou comprador (this name served as the company’s China brand and is still legible upon the central parapet). The building is designed in a grand but architecturally undistinguished style (dubbed ‘expedient-classicism’ by local architectural expert Anne Warr). Constructed from reinforced concrete with a granite veneer, it incorporates Ionic columns on the third to fifth floor. The interior is dominated by a massive staircase finished in Italian marble. Scots partners William Jardine and James Matheson founded the first private company shipping tea to England in 1832. The Sino-Indian opium trade quickly came to dwarf its other activities, although it later diversified into new trade and transport related businesses. The company moved its headquarters to Shanghai in 1912 and retreated from the China in 1954. Today the building is occupied by the Shanghai Foreign Trade Commission.
No. 29: The Banque de L’Indo-Chine东方汇理银行 (Atkinson & Dallas, 1914) occupies a privileged position at the north of the Bund parade, in the Bund Origin area that served as the administrative core of colonial Shanghai. The three-story building is constructed in symmetrical French Renaissance style, with tall Baroque arches at the roughened-granite base and twin polished granite columns above the ground floor. The Indo-Chine Bank, founded in 1875, was the largest French financial institution in China. Today, the building (along with No. 28 next door) is occupied by the China Everbright Bank. Back over the bridge on Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu is Huangpu Park 黄浦公园(Huangpu Gongyuan). The area was previously designated the Public Gardens during the concession era and dates back to the 1880s when the Bund was being built. The veracity of the story that the park carried a sign declaring “Chinese and dogs not admitted” is disputed, but still widely believed. There were certainly very strict rules. Only well dressed Chinese or servants who were accompanying their ‘white masters’ were permitted to enter. This controversial decree was revoked in 1928 after much resistance from the affluent local community. Today the Huangpu Park entrance has an imposing statue of the People’s Hero and is dominated by a concrete obelisk called Monument to the People’s Heroes built to commemorate those who lost their lived fighting natural disasters in the 1990s. In the basement is the Bund Historical Museum 外滩历史博物馆 that has wonderful old pictures and maps depicting changes to the area over the years. The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel 外滩观光隧道 located by the Statue of Chen Yi (Shanghai’s first mayor) takes you across the river to the heart of Lujiazui (and vice versa). The name is misleading and doesn’t really show you much of Shanghai. Instead capsules shoot you through a tunnel of psychedelic lights and other special effects. Adults will probably enjoy the weirdness and kids will love it. The elevated Bund Promenade that runs the entire length of Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu is a wonderful place to take a walk, offering an unobstructed view of the old Bund and Pudong New Area skylines. On an early morning the area is filled with groups practicing tai chi or ballroom dances. By late morning and afternoon the area is brimming with tour groups and vendors, so it gets crowded. From Shiuliupu Terminal 十六铺码头 the Huangpu Ferry takes you across the river for RMB 0.30, service every 15 minutes. A more leisurely alternative for those wanting to enjoy the Bund is the Huangpu River cruise, departing from the Jingling Pier. Rides in the day and evening both have their own special charm.
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No. 13: The Customs House 海关大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1927) was the last in a series of customs houses on the site. Given its official function, authority and stature were emphasized, which incorporates Doric columns within a reinforced concrete structure. It shares the Beaux-Arts neoclassicism of the HSBC building, but with greater vertical emphasis. Multiple turrets ascend to the central clocktower that provides one of the Bund’s most celebrated landmarks. The four-sided clock, shipped to Shanghai from London, chimes on the hour with impressive regularity. In a deliberate echo of Big Ben in London it was nicknamed Big-Ching. During the Cultural Revolution, the bell was decommissioned and replaced by large speakers playing the Communist anthem The East is Red. The building still houses the Shanghai customs and is closed to visitors. Its beautiful lobby mosaics of Chinese junks can sometimes be glimpsed from outside.
No. 18: The Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China Building 渣打银行大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1923) was designed as a reinforced concrete structure faced with granite, roughened on the first floor, featuring twin pairs of Ionic columns shipped from Tuscany. The Chartered Bank was founded in 1853, opened its Shanghai branch in 1858 and bought a previous property at the same site in 1892 (its Shanghai headquarters is now in Pudong). When the bank departed in 1949, the building was occupied by a variety of government bureaus. An extensive renovation of the building by Italian architect Fillipo Gabiani of Kokaistudios was completed in 2005, converting a somewhat dilapidated remnant of Old Shanghai into today’s Bund 18 外滩十八号, a showpiece of the new Bund, complete with Zegna and Cartier flagship stores on the ground floor, as well as Boucheron, Vertu, Patek Philippe and ST DuPont boutiques. Dining and entertainment options include the lobby Sibilla Café食吧, Tan Wai Lou 滩外楼, Sens & Bund雅德and Bar Rouge. The Bund 18 Creative Centre adds fine arts to the high culture mix. In 2006, the meticulous Bund 18 restoration project received the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Award.
No. 20: The Cathay Hotel华懋饭店 (Palmer and Turner, 1929) was commissioned by Victor Sassoon to serve as his private residence and the centre of his extensive Shanghai operations as well as the pre-eminent hotel in the city. Palmer and Turner’s Tug Wilson designed the building in New York Art Deco style, constructed in reinforced concrete with nautically-inspired wedge shape and dramatic vertical emphasis climaxing in the building’s landmark ‘prow’: a towering green copper pyramid roof. It was the first Art Deco structure in Shanghai and remains one of the most magnificent. The hotel was legendary for its opulent décor, grand rooms themed by different world cultures and impeccable service. Its carved ceilings, maple wood dance floors, and Lalique encrusted doors have greeted many of the world’s greatest celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, George Vanderbilt, Doris Duke, W. Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward, who wrote his play Private Lives there in 1930. The hotel was closed soon after the Japanese occupied the International Settlement in 1941 and was not re-opened until 1956 with its new name: the Peace Hotel. The Jinjiang group has managed it since 1978 and from June 2007 it has been under renovation, scheduled to re-open in 2010 in a joint venture with Fairmount Hotels.
No. 28: The Glen Line Building格林邮船大楼 (Palmer and Turner, 1921) was originally built for the offices of the Glen Line Scottish Shipping Company. This solid, fortress-like, seven-story reinforced concrete structure, designed in Renaissance style, makes minimal concession to decorative grace. With its predominance of unadorned masonry, chaotic appurtenances and massive central tower, it radiates an impressive seriousness of purpose, well-suited to such later oocupants as the Bank of Japan and the German consulate during WWII, the United States Consulate and Information Service after the war and the Shanghai People's Radio station after 1949. 
At the end of the promenade, at the T-junction with Yan’an Lu, stands a slim lighthouse-like structure. This is the Meteorological Signal Tower built in 1907. It is also called the called the ‘Gutzlaff Signal Tower’ named after a 17th century German priest who developed a flag-based warning system to alert ships and boats of oncoming weather conditions. The ground floors used to contain the Bund Museum, but this has since been closed. All that remains are a few old (but interesting) photos. The second and third floors are occupied by a newly-opened bar, Atanu阿塔努酒吧. 
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