Shanghai, China
外滩 · Wàitān
A mile of stone banks, hotels and offices along the Huangpu River, built between the 1900s and the 1930s when Shanghai was a treaty port run largely by foreigners. Across the water stands the skyline of the 1990s and after. Between the two, on the riverside walk, you see a hundred years of the city at once.
Photo: Dllu, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
You are on a broad raised walkway along a wide brown river busy with barges. Behind you, across a road of traffic, stands a wall of heavy stone buildings: domes, columns, a clock tower, a green pyramid roof. In front of you, across the water, a forest of glass towers rises, among them a tower with pink balls on it and the tallest building in China, twisting as it climbs.
In 1842, after the first Opium War, the Treaty of Nanking opened Shanghai to British trade. A towpath along the river became the waterfront of the British settlement. Anglo-Indian traders called such a path a "bund", from a Hindi word for embankment. A few years later, in 1848, Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto.
The Bund is a public street and riverside walk. The buildings are visited one by one; some lobbies are open to the public.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The riverside promenade | Free, at all hours |
| HSBC Building (No. 12) | Entrance hall open in banking hours |
| Custom House (No. 13) | Outside only |
| Peace Hotel (Sassoon House) | Lobby and bar open to the public |
| Bank of China (No. 23) | Banking hall in business hours |
| Waibaidu Bridge and Huangpu Park | Free |
The buildings behind you went up mostly between 1900 and 1937, banks, trading houses, clubs and hotels competing to look the grandest. They were designed by foreign architects, many from one Shanghai firm, Palmer and Turner, and built by Chinese contractors and workmen.
Across the river, Pudong was farmland and warehouses until the 1990s. The tower with the pink balls, the Oriental Pearl, opened in 1994. The tallest, the Shanghai Tower, 632 metres, was finished in 2015.
The Bund is a public street. There is nothing to pay and nothing to book.
"These are colonial government buildings." Almost all were built as private offices of banks and companies. The settlements were run by councils of foreign ratepayers, not by a colonial government.
"Everything here is old." The riverside walk and its flood wall were rebuilt in the 1990s, and the road in front in the 2000s.
"The buildings are museums." Most are banks, hotels and restaurants again. You may walk into the lobbies of some; others are offices.
Walk the riverside promenade from south to north, crossing to the buildings where you want to look closely. It is about 1.5 kilometres.
At number 2, near the south end, is the old Shanghai Club of 1910, where British merchants drank at what was said to be the longest bar in the world. It is a hotel again, and the bar has been rebuilt.
The great domed building at number 12 was finished in 1923 for the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. Its builders called it the finest building between the Suez Canal and the Bering Strait. It is now the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. You may step into the entrance hall to see the mosaics in the dome, covered with plaster in the 1950s and found again in 1997.
Two bronze lions guarded the door. The originals are now in the Shanghai History Museum; the ones outside are copies.
Next door, at number 13, is the Custom House of 1927 with its clock tower. The clock and bells were made in England. On the hour it chimes over the river.
At the corner of Nanjing Road stands Sassoon House, 1929, with its green copper pyramid. It opened as the Cathay Hotel and is now the Fairmont Peace Hotel. The jazz band in its bar has played old Shanghai songs since the 1980s.
Nanjing Road, the city's great shopping street, starts here and runs west.
Beside it, at number 23, is the Bank of China of 1937, the only big building on the Bund designed partly by a Chinese architect, Lu Qianshou. Its roof is Chinese in shape, and its walls are carved with Chinese patterns. It was meant to be the tallest on the Bund; it ended a little lower than its neighbour, Sassoon House.
At the north end a steel bridge of 1907 crosses Suzhou Creek where it flows into the Huangpu. In 2008 it was floated away for repair and brought back the next year.
Beside it is Huangpu Park, the first public garden of the settlement, opened in 1868. For decades its rules kept out Chinese who were not servants of foreigners. In it now stands the Monument to the People's Heroes, three tall stone fins put up in 1993.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 1842 | The Treaty of Nanking opens Shanghai to foreign trade | Britain's Mines Act bans women and children from working underground |
| 1868 | The settlement's public garden opens | The Meiji Restoration begins in Japan |
| 1907 | Waibaidu Bridge is built | Qiu Jin is executed in Shaoxing |
| 1923 | The domed bank is finished | The great Kanto earthquake destroys Tokyo |
| 1929 | Sassoon House opens as the Cathay Hotel | The Wall Street Crash |
| 1937 | The Bank of China building is finished; war reaches Shanghai | The Golden Gate Bridge opens |
| 1994 | The Oriental Pearl Tower opens across the river | The Channel Tunnel opens |
| 2015 | The Shanghai Tower is finished | The Paris climate agreement |
Films from official channels, played from YouTube. Nothing is loaded until you press play.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
Touch the paws of the bronze lions at the bank's door and money will come to you. Shanghai people say the lion with its mouth open roars in wealth and the one with its mouth shut keeps it in.
Source: Shanghai custom; the habit is also told of the lions at the bank's Hong Kong office
The bells in the clock tower, made in England, were said to be tuned to Big Ben in London, so that the Bund would sound like Westminster.
Source: Shanghai lore; the clock first played the Westminster chimes
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-12. Reference works on the buildings and the history of the settlements; the Bund is a public street and has no ticket office or site of its own.
Checked 2026-11-12
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