Wednesday, April 6, 2011
China - The Bund (1880)
The Bund in its early stage (1880)/Shanghai.
Sent by Roy, a postcrosser from Beijing, China.
This is from Wikipedia : The Bund (simplified Chinese: 外滩; traditional Chinese: 外灘; pinyin: Wàitān) is an area of Huangpu District in central Shanghai, People's Republic of China. The area centres on a section of Zhongshan Road (East-1 Zhongshan Road) within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River, facing Pudong, in the eastern part of Huangpu District. The Bund usually refers to the buildings and wharves on this section of the road, as well as some adjacent areas. The Bund is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Shanghai. Building heights are restricted in this area.
The word "bund" means an embankment or an embanked quay. The word comes from the Hindi-Urdu word band, which has Persian origins and meant an embankment, levee or dam (a cognate of English terms "bind", "bond" and "band", and the German word "bund", etc). In Chinese port cities, the English term came to mean, especially, the embanked quay along the shore. In English, "Bund" is pronounced to rhyme with "fund".
There are many "bands" to be found in Baghdad, even today. There are numerous sites in India, China, and Japan which are called "bunds" (e.g. the Yokohama Bund). However, "The Bund" as a proper noun almost invariably refers to this stretch of embanked riverfront in Shanghai.