Insight Guides City Guide Shanghai

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight Guides
• ISBN:
  9781786712981
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

From deciding when to go, to choosing what to see when you arrive, this is all you need to plan your trip and experience the best of Shanghai, with in-depth insider information on must-see, top attractions like the Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai Museum, and hidden cultural gems like the longtangs and M50.

Insight City Guide Shanghai is ideal for travellers seeking immersive cultural experiences, from exploring The Bund, to discovering Xintiandi.
In-depth on history and culture: enjoy special features on street food, architecutre and performing arts, all written by local experts
Includes innovative extras that are unique in the market - all Insight City Guides come with a free eBook and app that's regularly updated with new hotel, bar, restaurant, shop and local event listings
Invaluable maps, travel tips and practical information ensure effortless planning
Outstanding orientation information will save you time while you explore
Excellent Editor's Choice recommendations will make your trip more memorable
Inspirational colour photography throughout
Inventive design makes for an engaging reading experience

About Insight Guides: Insight Guides is a pioneer of full-colour guide books, with almost 50 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides with user-friendly, modern design. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps, as well as phrase books, picture-packed eBooks and apps to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

The Bund and beyond

For the visitor, the Bund is the perfect introduction to Shanghai’s glorious past – and its even more glittering present.

Main Attractions

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank

Customs House

Bund 18

Fairmont Peace Hotel

Bank of China

Rockbund Art Museum

St Joseph’s Church

On this small oblong plot of land, about the size of Manhattan Island from the Battery to 58th Street, are jammed all but a handful of the foreign banks and all of the important native ones, all the office buildings, the hotels, the important shops and big department stores, most of the clubs... The industry, the finance, the amusements of the fifth biggest city in the world.” So wrote Fortune magazine in 1934. Shanghai in the 21st century may be a city defined by a spectacular warp-speed journey into the future, but the Bund (Waitan) remains one of its signature sights. The 2km (1.25-mile) sweep of historic buildings west of the Huangpu River is a Concession-era time capsule, a sepia portrait in a Kodachrome world.

The Bund at dusk.

Getty Images

The sight of so many magnificent buildings all at once – each more beautiful, more stately, more glamorous than the last – is nothing short of breathtaking, particularly when the Bund is illuminated in soft gold light at night, and glows as if lit from within. The stretch of European buildings has long been one of the city’s most well-known sights. For years the city slowed down its development plans for the Bund, which helped retain its original character.

Historic buildings line the Bund’s promenade.

Getty Images

Today, the Bund is firmly back in the limelight – this time as a premier dining, entertainment and shopping hub. The renaissance began with the opening of the ritzy M on the Bund restaurant at the Huaxia Bank building, and renovations to the AIG building and the former Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in 1999. In 2004, celebrity chef Jean Georges Vongerichten opened Jean Georges at Three on the Bund, and later two other restaurants within the same building. Today there are fine-dining establishments, beautiful nightclubs and luxury brand boutiques along the entire stretch, while spiffy refurbishments have brought the glamour back to the Fairmont Peace and Waldorf Astoria hotels.

Doing tai chi.

Ryan Pyle/Apa Publications

The Bund promenade with the Customs House in the background.

Fairmont Hotels

Along the Bund

The banks and financial institutions of Old Shanghai’s Wall Street were anchored along the Bund and also just behind it in the International Settlement area. This is where visitors will find a treasure trove of architectural imprints made by long-forgotten giants.

Like the buildings that line it, the word “bund” is itself a legacy of the colonial era. The British signatories to the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the First Opium War and opened Shanghai to foreign trade (separate treaties were signed by the US and France in 1844), brought with them a new vocabulary, some of it borrowed. Bund comes from the Hindi word band, meaning artificial embankment, a word that the British applied to the embanked quay along the shores of the settlements in their Chinese treaty ports and in British colonies from Ceylon to Malacca.

Old Shanghai’s maritime soul determined the strategic location of the Bund – on the shore of the Huangpu River where great trading ships sailed in from the Yangtze. Originally a muddy mess with sewage and refuse strewn on its banks, the strip was filled and “bunded” in the late 1880s. Only then did the classic Bund, lined by jetties, with trading houses and financial institutions just behind them, begin to take shape. Waitan, the Chinese name for the area, means “outside beach”.

A four-lane highway now runs where once the great mass of labourers hauled crates into the trading houses and rickshaw pullers ran. Remodelled in 2010, the raised promenade has replaced the old jetties, and it’s a sign of the times that most of the tourists who pack the promenade want to be photographed against the Pudong skyline (for more information, click here) – not the Bund.

Tip

Boats departing on cruises (ranging from 1–3.5 hours) of the Huangpu River can be booked at the Tourist Centre of Shiliupu Wharf on Zhongshan East No.2 Road near Hotel Indigo. Note: there are several booths (and some of the signage is in Chinese), so it can be quite confusing. Look out for the Shanghai Huangpu River Cruise Company. Evening cruises run nightly between 6.30 and 9.30pm, departing at 30-minute intervals and taking approximately 45 minutes. Tickets can be bought at the terminal. It’s recommended to purchase them before 5pm during high season.

River cruises

In the pre-aeroplane age, the first sight that greeted vessels approaching Shanghai on the Huangpu River was the Bund. Visitors today can replicate that vision on river cruises from the Shiliupu Wharf (see tip). The cruise boats slide past an eye-popping array of freighters, ships and barges – a sign of the vibrant activity in China’s largest port – and give you panoramic riverside views of the Bund and Pudong.

Night v...