What a strange name. I wasn’t sure if people were saying Bund, Band or Bun!

The Bund is a stretch of buildings on a road which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River. It sits between Baidu Bridge and JinLin East Road. The embankment has a 771-metre long wall built for flood control. It’s also probably the most famous skyline in Shanghai with mentions in famous movies, books and songs.

After googling a bit, it was said that grown all around that area are Chinese wisterias, gingko trees and azalea. I wish I took notice of the trees, would have loved to see how gingko trees look like!

Pictured below is the Shanghai city skyline seen from The Bund side.

The Bund is a beautiful stretch to walk at dusk on a cool day, but there is nothing much to do there besides that. Take a few city skyline shots and appreciate the architectural styles of the buildings and that is an hour walk about done.

The word “bund” means an embankment or an embanked quay, and comes from the Urdu word band, meaning an embankment, levee or dam (a cognate of English terms “bind,” “bond” and “band,” the German term “bund,” etc.). “Bund” is pronounced to rhyme with “fund”. The term was brought to Shanghai by the family of Victor Sassoon, a Baghdadi-Nepali Jew. There are many “bands” to be found in Baghdad, even today. There are numerous sites in India, China, and Japan which are called “bunds” (e.g. the Yokohama Bund). However, “The Bund” as a proper noun almost invariably refers to this stretch of embanked riverfront in Shanghai.
Source: Wikipedia

Pictured below is the newly refurbished Waldorf Shanghai Hotel on The Bund side, and also where the HSBC Welcome reception was held. Beautiful.

The biggest shocker for me is the architectural styles of the building. They just seemed so European it almost felt like you weren’t in China. Romanesque, Renaissance, Neo-Classical and Art Deco… and building heights are restricted in this area. Good town planning unlike places like Malaysia where the city’s “flavour” is lost by towering skyscrapers and horribly designed buildings. By the way, did you know that Shanghai as one of the richest collections of Art Deco architectures in the world.