A night time walk along The Bund

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http://www.heygo.com 12th March - A night stroll along the Bund



Alice was our guide again, I joined her a couple of days ago for a walk during the day along the Bund. It was midday in U.K. and 8pm in Shanghai.



Alice made us all laugh when instead of pointing out the skyline buildings with her finger she produced a chopstick from her pocket.



The clock tower building is The Shanghai National Post Office, built in 1924 with an interesting mix of European styles of architecture. It is now a historical landmark under protection as the Shanghai Postal Museum.

Inside the museum, there is a statue of Mr. Zhu Xuefan who was the first minister of the postal department. There is also a display of oracle bones that records military correspondence. There is also a stamp collection of early Chinese postal stamps and stamps from other countries.



The Shanghai Tower was designed by Gensler with a curved and twisted form generated through a series of wind-tunnel tests, expected to reduce wind load by as much as 24 per cent during typhoons.

It comprises 121 storeys, divided into nine vertical zones that include shops at the base, offices in the centre, and hotels, cultural facilities and observation decks at the top.



World trade Centre took the developers 11 years to finish the building. It officially opened in 2008, Part of the reason for the delay was a controversy about the opening at the top of the building. In the original design, the opening was a circle, but people objected because it looked like a Japanese rising sun symbol over the city, so instead the square shape was built. This is how it got its nickname "The Bottle Opener."



Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower - The spheres resemble a series of pearls of different sizes, this distinctive design reminded the chief of the jury board of a Tang Dynasty poem, in which there's a sentence translated as "big and small pearls falling on a jade plate", it was very likely that this promoted them to chose this design.



We peeped through the gates to see the original British Consulate,one of the first foreign buildings to go up in Shanghai in 1852, though it was destroyed in a fire and replaced with the current structure in 1873. Now renovated, it is used as a financiers' club and restaurant.



With no bridge over Suzhou Creek, the only way to get across was by ferry, a British businessman named Wills directed the building of a large wooden bridge, Wills Bridge in 1856. Chinese had to pay to cross the bridge, and this triggered a storm of protest. In order to calm the masses, a wooden bridge, named Garden Bridge, was built to the west of it, free to the public. Later, the old bridge was demolished. In 1908, a steel bridge was constructed to replace the wooden bridge so as to allow streetcars over the river.

The changing colours of the lit bridge with tulips in the gardens looked very pretty.



We continued our walk along the promenade, quite a lot of people out on a Friday evening. We retraced the steps taken the other day but in the opposite direction so it was good to see the flower wall all lit up with the butterflies fluttering.



Alice, our guide is so enthusiastic to show everyone as much as possible in the allotted time so dashed across the road to take us into Building No.2 now the Waldorf Hotel, built in 1909, the English Renaissance-style building first opened as the Shanghai Club, the city’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club. Included in the property were bowling alleys, restaurants, game rooms, two wine cellars, a barber shop and its Long Bar, the longest bar in the world at 110 feet.

During WWII, the Japanese Navy seized the building as an officer’s club. When the communists took power following the war, the interiors took on a new personality as the bar was ripped out and much of the Western influences were purged. Then, in 1989, the former bar area became Shanghai’s first Kentucky Fried Chicken!



It was good to revisit Shanghai again.

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