1930s China through American eyes

The Bund and the Whangpoo River, Shanghai, China

We are looking north over Shanghai from the Typhoon Tower, used by the Weather Bureau, in the British quarter of the city. The broad street, lined by automobiles, which stretches along the curve of the river before us, is the Bund. The International Settlement of the foreign nations fronts on this street, while the swarming native city, en-girdled by walls, lies to the south, behind us.

Shanghai today has a population of 1,539,000, and some authorities believe that it is destined some day, as the metropolis of China, to become the greatest city of the world. Certainly its progress in recent years has been amazing, and though its many modern industries have suffered from the strikes and civil wars which have prevailed, they are established on solid foundations. Costly improvements to the Whangpoo river (Huangpu River), which we see at our right, and to the harbor, have helped in making it one of the first four or five ports of the world in tonnage. At the same time the foreign settlement had grown in eighteen years from 12,000 to 20,000 people. Real estate values along the Bund compare favorably with those in New York or Chicago, and the many fine buildings which we see have nearly all been erected in the past few years. Among these buildings, the one at the extreme left is the Shanghai Club, a British organization said to be the largest and finest club in the Orient. Beyond it, the structure with the dome is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and the one with the clock tower the new customs house, built in 1925.

[Photo provided to China Daily/Keystone View Company]