In the late 1830s the British, growing tired of a trade deficit with China set about balancing the books by flooding the regulated opium market. Opium dens grew ever more crowded as the imperial coffers diminished. Finally in 1838 the Daoguang Emperor sent Lin Zexu to Guangzhou, where he had all the foreign opium destroyed and dealers arrested. The British retaliated by shelling the Chinese coastline. The resulting Treaty of Nanking signed by the Chinese in 1842 ceded the ‘treaty ports’ of Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai to the British.
The Shanghai concession started out as a marshy towpath on the banks of the Huangpu River vulnerable to flooding. The Anglo-Indian term Bund, meaning embankment related to a levy that was constructed to keep out the river. The original settlement ran for a mile along the river from the Suzhou creak in the north to today’s Yan’an Road in the south. When the British and American settlements merged into the International Settlement it became the political and cultural center of the city and financial center of Asia. An eclectic hotchpotch of classical and neoclassical European architecture sprang up along the Bund from banks and trading houses to clubs and consulates.
Some of the more notable buildings include the former Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, headquarters known as “the most luxurious building between the Suez Canal and the Bering Strait”. It contains a magnificent domed ceiling mosaic. The Customs House sports a clock imported from England modeled on Big Ben. Sir Victor Sassoon’s Peace Hotel, famous for its jazz band and wild parties still dominates the waterfront.
The arrival of the Japanese in 1937 marked the end of a golden era.
When the Communist Party took power in 1949 the Bund was left as a symbol of Western oppression. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that it was given a new lease of life when staid government institutions were evicted in favor of banks, shops and hotels. No matter how the city develops this unique strip of colonial architecture will remain intrinsically linked to the identity of the city.