The Bund has been called a 'museum of international architecture'

The Bund has been called a 'museum of international architecture' and indeed it was and still is. But it was also much more. Here were located the banks, hotels, exclusive clubs, press organizations and headquarters of international concerns. The twenty-six major structures, of various heights along approximately 1.5 kilometers of Zhongshan Lu and the Huangpu River, have changed little externally since the 1930s. All were constructed in western-inspired styles. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 the old tenants were gone. They had already been impacted by the wartime crises. Many of the structures were subdivided into government offices, department stores or storage areas. Furnishings were sold off or destroyed, and architectural features covered.More information about China Tours in chinatourguide.com.

The word "bund" means an embankment or an embanked quay. The word comes from the Persian word band, through Hindi-Urdu, meaning an embankment, levee or dam (a cognate of English terms "bind", "bond" and "band", and the German word "Bund", etc.). It is thus named after the bunds/levees in Baghdad along the Tigris, when the Baghdadi Jews such as the prominent Sassoon family settled their business in Shanghei in the 19th century and built heavily on the bund on the Huangpo. In these Chinese port cities, the English term came to mean, especially, the embanked quay along the shore. In English, "Bund" is pronounced to rhyme with "fund".
The bund, which extends from Jinling Road in the south to the waibaidu bridge in the north, is a 1.5-kilometer-long boulevard on the western bank of the Huangpu river. walking along Zhongshan Road, not only can visitors enjoy the scenery of Huangpu River but have a glimpse of the development of Lujiazui district on the other side of Huangpu River. The architecture along the bund is unanimously honored as a "world architectural fair", including all kinds of tall buildings like the gothic style, the baroque style, the roman style, the classical style, the renaissance style and the combination of Chinese and western style. A romantic place for lover's.