The Bund is a visible reminder of the business relationship between China and the West in the 1920s and 30s. That relationship goes back much further though. Just as the French Revolution was getting underway in 1789, a revolution in world trade was beginning here, as the Catharina & Anna sailed down the Huangpu with its cargo from Hamburg, among the first trading ships to arrive from the West.
Many traders were to follow, and 1900 saw the founding of the German Association, the forerunner of today’s German Chamber of Commerce. Its members imported German technology, were involved in the tea trade, invested in what is today the HSBC bank, and exported Chinese agricultural products such as goose feathers and pig intestines.
Colourful figures of the heyday of the Bund include Du Yuesheng, or “Big-Eared Du”, who worked his way up through the ranks of a secret society called the Green Gang to become its boss. He would, however, become a respected businessman on the boards of forty companies and banks, on the Wall Street of the East.
Hartmut Oertel, who followed a banking career himself in Shanghai after first visiting the city in 1980, tells these and other stories of Shanghai’s trading past, as the city movestowards the construction of China’s first free port by the year 2020.