Balcony of the Peace Hotel, the Bund, Shanghai. April 1998
The Bund, Shanghai. April 1998
What to do with inconvenient history
I am not a huge PRC fan. Don't get me wrong - I still think China is a fantastic place and although trips there were fraught with frustrations, they also gave me a deep appreciation of how much China has been underrated. China, the Middle Kingdom, is now reasserting itself and taking the very long view of history. In that sweep of time, Shanghai's Bund must be a thorn in its side. When China was at a low point, the European powers swept in and carved out enclaves on its coast to reap the benefits of that ancient land. Shanghai's Bund was one of them.
The Bund is a waterfront area and a protected historical district in central Shanghai. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River in the eastern part of Huangpu District. The area along the river faces the modern skyscrapers of Lujiazui in the Pudong District. The Bund usually refers to the buildings and wharves on this section of the road, as well as some adjacent areas. From the 1860s to the 1930s, it was the rich and powerful center of the foreign establishment in Shanghai, operating as a legally protected treaty port.
(Wikipedia)
The huge multinational bank reduced to an abbreviation, HSBC, is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation - a reminder of Shanghai's colonial importance. As history proceeded and the name became embarrassing, it was reduced to letters, but it is the official name of the bank all the same. Shanghai was one of the most powerful financial centers of East Asia and the Chinese only operated on its periphery. The Bund was the location of the famous British colonial riverside park with signs that warned, "No Dogs, No Chinese", so residents would not have to rub shoulders with the locals. In spite of all of that, the Chinese have not bulldozed the place and keep it as a historical monument to part of their history.
The word bund - from the Persian word band, through Hindustani - means "embankment" (in the London sense), "levee", or "dam". It is a cognate of English bind, bond, and band, and German Bund. Mumbai's Apollo Bunder and city names like Bandar Abbas and Banda Aceh share the same etymology. The various bunds in east Asia may be named after the bunds along the Tigris in Baghdad. The word would have been brought by migrating Baghdadi Jews like the Sassoon family who settled their businesses in Shanghai and other ports in east Asia in the 19th century and built harbors there. In these Chinese ports, the English term came to mean the embanked quay along the shore. In English, bund is pronounced to rhyme with fund. The Bund, without qualification to location, usually refers to the stretch of embanked riverfront in Shanghai.
(Wikipedia)
The Baghdadi Jews who were expelled from what is now Iraq not only established themselves in Singapore [see: Jewish Quarter], but also played an important role in the founding of the foreign enclave, the Bund, in Shanghai, China. They would later play a role in saving many Eastern European Jews escaping Hitler's death camps. So the word "Bund" was actually derived from language used by Jewish immigrants - ironically fascinating.
The Bund houses 52 buildings of various architectural styles, generally Eclecticist, but with some buildings displaying predominantly Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Baroque Revival, Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts styles, and a number in Art Deco style (Shanghai has one of the richest collections of Art Deco architectures in the world).
(Wikipedia)
Again, this chunk of foreign-built, mud-in-yer-eye buildings in China is acknowledged as having architectural significance and preserved by the same country who was initially humiliated by its construction. The Bund was an incredibly complex place. To look at that stretch of old buildings was to see Chicago's lakefront of the same age - the only place for me that was remotely similar. And, I knew NOTHING about the Bund or any of its history before my first visit from Japan back in 1986. Work friends and I actually took the boat over from Yokohama. At the time there was a "cruise" from Yokohama to Shanghai and we were looking for some "adventure" after strictly regulated Japan. The Bund of 1986 was still frozen in Pre-Revolutionary China. We rang in the New Year at the old Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel) in its ballroom dancing to Big Band music played by aged Chinese musicians - an extremely strange, yet memorable experience.
I returned to the Bund about 10 years later and it had changed drastically. Shanghai was modernizing at a blistering pace and Pudong across the river was no longer just a muddy flat. It had become the center of the New Shanghai and we saw the bases of all the skyscrapers about to be built. The photo above is me on the Peace Hotel Rooftop. By that time the hotel had been renovated back to its glory days as the Chinese, even under Communism, never lost their ability to turn a buck - Westerners would pay good money to stay in that historical hotel and walk in the park that once forbade both dogs and Chinese to enter.
I saw the Bund twice in my life. Once I was lucky enough to arrive there in the classic and historical way, by ship. I saw the Bund in its original (but very tattered) condition before modernization. A decade later it was being rejuvenated and now it is a vibrant and symbolic neighborhood of Shanghai in spite of its history.
The modern world will never function properly until it starts to recognize China on its own terms - something they have been doing with the West for a long time. China has had a huge head start - time to play catch up.
Comments