The Bund, Shanghai: A Riverfront Where Empires Left Their Facades

At six in the morning, the Bund belongs to Shanghai rather than to tourists. Old men steer wooden diabolos through the air beside the railing, a tai chi class moves in slow unison, and the Huangpu River slides past in the color of wet slate. Facing the water, Lujiazui's glass towers stand silvered by haze. Behind you are the stone banks, clubs, and trading houses that made this city a byword for ambition a century ago. Standing between those two Shanghais is the whole reason the Bund rewards an early alarm clock.

The Bund—Waitan in Mandarin, roughly "the outer beach"—is a 1.5-kilometer promenade on the west bank of the Huangpu River, in old Puxi, running from Waibaidu Bridge in the north to the Yan'an East Road signal tower in the south. It costs nothing, never closes, and is permanently crowded at night. The name once described a mudflat outside the walled city; today it is the seam where Shanghai's nineteenth-century trading past meets its twenty-first-century skyline.

The story starts with an unpromising towpath. After the Treaty of Nanking opened Shanghai to foreign trade in 1843, British, American, and later French merchants claimed the riverbank as a concession. Wharves, godowns, and counting houses went up first. In the 1920s and 1930s, as Shanghai became Asia's financial capital, those modest buildings were demolished and replaced with the monumental banks and hotels you see now. The Bund was bombed in 1937, then frozen for decades under a planned economy, before being restored and polished in the 1990s and again for the 2010 World Expo.

The result is often called a museum of world architecture: 52 buildings packed into a single stretch, in styles running from neoclassical to Art Deco. Highlights include the former HSBC Building (1923), with its domed banking hall and mosaic ceiling, now occupied by the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank; the Custom House (1927), whose clock tower still chimes across the river; the Art Deco Fairmont Peace Hotel, once the glittering playground of the Sassoon family; and the Bank of China Building (1937), designed by Chinese architect Lu Qianshou and famously shortened so it would not overshadow its foreign neighbor.

Look for the smaller details. At the north end, the Waibaidu Bridge, a steel truss completed in 1908, was the first all-steel bridge in China. Near the middle of the promenade stands a bronze Chen Yi, the city's first Communist mayor, greeting the river with quiet confidence. A short walk south, the Bund Bull answers Wall Street's Charging Bull, though Shanghai's version arrived in 2010 with a swagger all its own.

Across the water, Pudong's Lujiazui peninsula supplies the postcard: the 468-meter Oriental Pearl Tower strung with spheres, the tiered Jin Mao Tower, the bottle-opener silhouette of the Shanghai World Financial Center, and the 632-meter Shanghai Tower, the tallest building in China. In the evening the historic facades behind you are floodlit in warm gold, while the skyline ahead performs a slow color show that changes with the weather and the hour.

Plan your visit around light and crowds. Come at sunrise for open space and soft reflections, or on a clear evening for the skyline at its most theatrical. The promenade is busiest from about 7 to 10 p.m. and on weekend nights; if you want the classic photograph without the elbows, take a Huangpu River cruise or cross to Pudong and shoot back at the historic facades instead. To get there, ride Metro Line 2 or 10 to East Nanjing Road, or Line 10 to Yuyuan Garden; the walk from Nanjing Road's pedestrian street takes about ten minutes. Pair the Bund with the riverside Rockbund lanes, Yuyuan Garden, or the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, a gloriously kitschy ride beneath the river.

Give the Bund two visits, not one: a daylight walk to read the architecture slowly, and a return after dark to watch the city light itself. Wear comfortable shoes, carry water in the sticky summer months, and let yourself linger at the railing while the ferries cross. Whether you come for the history, the photographs, or simply the view, this riverfront delivers the clearest introduction to Shanghai you will find anywhere. Make it your first evening here and your last, and you will understand this city faster than any museum could teach you.