BUND AND THE HUANGPU RIVER

    A combination of Liverpool and 1920s Manhattan , the most impressive street in Shanghai has always been the Bund , but better known among locals as Wai Tan (literally "outside beach"). During Shanghai 's riotous heyday it was not only the city's financial centre but also a hectic working harbor.
Named after an old Anglo-Indian term, bunding (the embanking of a muddy foreshore), the Bund was in every sense old Shanghai's commercial heart, with the river on one side, the offices of the leading banks and trading houses on the other. In recent years, the Bund has taken on an entirely new aspect, with the construction, just across the river, of the dramatically conspicuous Oriental Pearl TV Tower, so high its antenna is often shrouded in mist.

    The northern end of the Bund starts from the confluence of the Huangpu and the Suzhou Creek. Bund itself is a popular place for locals to stroll after dinner or to exercise in the early morning, while tourists from all over China patrol the waterfront taking photos of each other against the backdrop of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

    Right on the corner of the two waterways, Huangpu Park was another British creation, the British Public Gardens , established on a patch of land formed by chance when mud and silt gathered around a wrecked ship. These days the park (daily 5am-9pm ; free) contains a stone monument to the "Heroes of the People", and is also a popular spot for citizens practicing tai ji early in the morning; but it's best simply for the promenade which commands the junction of the two rivers. Underneath the monument lurks a small museum ( 9am-4pm ; free) with an informative presentation on
Shanghai 's history that is worth a few minutes of your time.

    Walking down the Bund you'll pass a succession of grandiose Neoclassical edifices, once built to house the great foreign enterprises. Just south of here, straddling the eastern end of Nanjing Lu, is one of the most famous hotels in China , the Peace Hotel , formerly as the Cathay Hotel. The main building (on the north side of Nanjing Lu) is a relic of another great trading house, Sassoon's, and was originally known as Sassoon House. The Peace today still caters to the rich, but it's well worth a visit for the bar with its legendary jazz band, and for a walk around the lobby and upper floors to take in the faded Art-Deco elegance. The smaller wing on the south side of Nanjing Lu was originally the Palace Hotel, built around 1906; its first floor now holds the Western-style Peace Café, a much used city-centre rendezvous.

    Next door to the Peace, at 19 Zhongshan Lu (the Bund), the Bank of China was designed in the 1920s by Shanghai architectural firm Palmer & Turner, who brought in a Chinese architect to make the building "more Chinese" after construction was complete. The architect placed a Chinese roof onto the Art-Deco edifice, creating an odd juxtaposition of styles that delights to this day.
Carrying on down the Bund, the Customs House is one of the few buildings to have retained its original function. And its distinctive clock tower, which was modeled after Big Ben, was adapted to chime. You can step into the downstairs lobby for a peek at some faded mosaics of maritime motifs on the ceiling.

    Right next to this, and also with an easily recognizable domed roofline, the former headquarters of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (built in 1921) is one of the most imposing of all the Bund facades. Each wall of the marble octagonal entrance originally boasted a mural depicting the Bank's eight primary locations: Bangkok , Calcutta , Hong Kong , London , New York , Paris , Shanghai and Tokyo .
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NANJING LU AND AROUND
    Stretching west from the Bund through the heart of Shanghai lie the main commercial streets of the city, among them one of the two premier shopping streets, Nanjing Lu , with its two major parallel arteries, Fuzhou Lu and Yan'an Lu. In the days of the foreign concessions, expatriates described Nanjing Lu as a cross between Broadway and Oxford Street . Even after 1949, Nanjing Lu remained a centre for theatre and cinema as well as one of the most crowded shopping streets in the world.
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NORTH OF SUZHOU CREEK
    North across the Waibaidu Bridge from the Bund, you enter an area that, before the War, was the Japanese quarter of the International Settlement, and which since 1949 has been largely taken over by housing developments. The obvious interest lies in the Hongkou Park area (also known as Lu Xun Park), with its monuments to the political novelist Lu Xun, although the whole district is a lively and architecturally interesting residential quarter.

Lu Xun Park (daily 6am-7pm ; ￥1) is one of the best places for observing Shanghainese at their most leisured and relaxed. Between 6 and 8am in the morning, the masses undergo their daily work-out session of tai ji and other sports. Later in the day, amorous couples frolic on the paddle boats in the figure 8-shaped lagoon in the middle of the park and old men teach their grandkids how to fly kites. The park is also home to the grandiose and rather pompous Tomb of Lu Xun , complete with a seated statue and an inscription in Mao's calligraphy, which was erected here in 1956 to commemorate the fact that Lu Xun had spent the last ten years of his life in this part of Shanghai . The tomb even went against Lu Xun's own wishes to be buried simply in a small grave in a western Shanghai cemetery. The novelist is further memorialized in the Lu Xun Memorial Hall (daily 9-11am & 1.30-4pm ; ￥5), also in the park, to the right of the main entrance. Here, newly expanded exhibits include original correspondence, among them letters and photographs from George Bernard Shaw.

    A block southeast of the park on Shanyin Lu (Lane 132, House 9), you can also visit Lu Xun's Former Residence (daily 9am-4pm ; ￥4). It's definitely worthwhile going out of your way to see this place, especially if you have already visited the former residences of Zhou Enlai and Sun Yatsen in the French Quarter. Lu Xun's sparsely furnished house offers a fascinating glimpse into typical Japanese housing of the period - on the outside, its staid brick facade, tightly packed in among similarly designed houses, bly resembles the Back Bay District of Boston. Japanese housing of the time was a good deal smaller than European, but still surprisingly comfortable with balconies overlooked by palm trees. Lu Xun lived in this house with his wife and son from 1933 until his death in 1936.
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OLD CITY
    The Old City never formed part of the International Settlement, today it covers an oval-shaped area of about four square kilometres, circumscribed by Renmin Lu (to the north) and Zhonghua Lu (to the south) and coming to within a couple of hundred metres of the southern Bund on its northeastern side. In modern times it has been slashed down the middle by the main north-south artery, Henan Lu. The easiest approach from Nanjing Dong Lu is to walk due south along Henan Lu or Sichuan Lu.

    Tree-lined ring roads had already replaced the original walls and moats as early as 1912, and sanitation has obviously improved vastly since the last century, but to cross the boundaries into the Old City is still to enter a different world. The twisting alleyways are a haven of free enterprise, bursting with makeshift markets selling fish, vegetables, cheap trinkets, clothing and the appetizing smells of cooking food. Two of Shanghai 's best antique markets are also located in or near the Old City . Ironically, for a tourist entering this area, the feeling is indeed a little like entering a Chinatown in a Western city.

    The centre of activity today is an area known locally as Chenghuang Miao (after a local temple) surrounding the two most famous and crowded tourist sights in the whole city, the Yu Yuan and the Huxinting Tea House, both located right in the middle of a new, touristy bazaar which caters to the rapidly swelling numbers of Chinese tourists who pour into the area. "Antiques", scrolls and various kitschy souvenirs feature prominently, and there are also lots of good places to eat dian xin, Shanghai dim sum, some more reasonable than others. The Yu Yuan ( Jade Garden ; daily 8.30am-5pm ; ￥15) is a classical Chinese garden featuring pools, walkways, bridges and rockeries, created in the sixteenth century by a high official in the imperial court in honour of his father. During Lantern Festival, on the fifteenth day of the traditional New Year, 10,000 lanterns (and an even larger number of spectators) brighten up the garden. The Yu Yuan is not more impressive than the gardens of nearby Suzhou , but given that it pre-dates the relics of the International Settlement by some three centuries, the Shanghainese are understandably proud of it.

    After visiting the garden, you can step into the delightful Huxinting (Heart of Lake Pavilion; downstairs daily 5.30-noon & 1.30-5pm; upstairs daily 8.30am-5pm & 8.30-10pm), where practically every visitor who has ever been to Shanghai, including the Queen of England, has dropped in for tea. The tea house is reached across a zigzag bridge spanning a small ornamental lake, just across from the entrance to Yu Yuan. In the downstairs section, you buy a ticket for ￥10 and can then enjoy endless refills while watching the elderly locals, who sit for hours amid the wood panelling, playing cards, chatting, or dozing to the traditional music of a venerable Chinese orc