On Thursday we walked down to the Bund, the area where the foreigners lived and worked when they first began in 1845 to build concessions, after forcing their way into China in 1842 with gunboats. The Bund is one of the most famous landmarks, a mile long stretch of buildings from Gothic to Art Deco style on the Huangpo River that, before China was closed to the West in the 1940s, was the financial center of China.
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| The Bund in the 1930s |
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| The Bund at night |
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| The Bund |
The Bund is right across the river from Pudong, the current financial center. The most famous building in Pudong is the Pearl Tower
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| The Pearl Tower, named for the many spheres which represent pearls |
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| The approach to Pearl Tower |
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| The Pearl Tower has a walkway all the way around |
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| Explosives dog. One missing letter makes a world of difference! |
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| We came at a time which wasn't very busy: This people organizer wasn't much use at this point except for creating additional exercise for visitors |
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| We went to the museum in the basement of the Pearl Tower which had a history of Shanghai |
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Wedding Sedan Chair decorated with a hundred children. (pearls) The shopowner had it prepared for the wedding of his son. Apparently it took 10 years to make, so he either started early or the wedding couple waited a very long time to get married.
The next section of the museum showed typical farm life in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) |
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| Weaving |
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| Spinning. Looks like a butter churn that the baby is in, but I'm not sure the Chinese had butter at this point. |
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| Wheelbarrows were a common way to get around at this time |
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| Merchants |
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| Opera Costume |
After Pearl Tower we went back to Nanjing Road, a street perpendicular to the Huangpu River at the Bund across from the Pearl Tower.
Apple
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| The view form our hotel at night. The lighted building on the left is the Pearl Tower |
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