A full day of sightseeing in Shanghai today …. We started the morning with a trip to the Bund. The Bund is a waterfront area in central Shanghai and looks directly over the new financial district of Pudong. The word Bund literally means ’embankment’ and it is an area along the bank of the Huangpu River. The road by the river is one of the most exclusive in Shanghai and has some fascinating buildings, many of them previously banks and trading houses. The largest building (Bund No.1) was originally the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC). They were, however, moved out in the Communist era and, though they fired to buy it back later, it is now a Chinese bank. The view across to Pudong shows how quickly the area has been developed. In the late 1980s, the area was still farmland and the picture below shows how much this has changed.
After the Bund we had an interesting trip to the Shanghai Museum. Unfortunately the galleries with painting and calligraphy were closed, but there were some fascinating displays of Chinese ethnic costumes, porcelain and Chinese currency (well – interesting to me!).
From there we headed to the Yu Gardens. The garden was first built in 1559 in the Ming Dynasty. The cost of development led to the original family going just and it gradually fell into disrepair. In 1709 it was bought by local leaders and opened to the public. During the First Opium War, it was damaged and used by the British as a base and it suffered various other periods of damage, but it is now fully restored. It is stunning – five acres of amazing buildings, rockeries, ponds and a profusion of plants.
In the evening we went on a river cruise along the Huangpu River – an amazing profusion of lights. Every building on the Pudong side of the River is festooned with LED lighting and displays animated adverts and constantly changing patterns and messages. It is essentially Picadilly Circus on steroids but hundreds of times higher …..