China’s most famous riverfront is regaining its glory, writes Brent Hannon
Shanghai is a city in love with its past, and echoes of its glory days get stronger with each passing year, as books, movies and photo exhibits highlighting the bygone gilded age find an increasingly receptive audience.
Now, with the openings of The Peninsula Shanghai, Fairmont Peace Hotel, Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund and The House of Roosevelt – all along the famous Huangpu River – the glamour of old Shanghai has jumped from the pages of books into a reality that can be tasted, experienced… and slept in.
Stretching along the river’s western bank, the Bund, an iconic strip of Shanghai, has reclaimed its status as the city’s entertainment hub with end-to-end renovations. And it gets better: across the water in Pudong (meaning “east of the river”), what was once farmland and country has become a financial hub of sleek, towering blocks that light up the sky at night. With its feng shui-infused waterfront location, neoclassical granite-block architecture and views of the restless Huangpu River, the Bund provides an entertainment-friendly combination of sweeping vistas, classic buildings and urban vibes that no other location can match.
The bridge in time
The Bund’s revival began when the classic twin-looped Waibaidu Bridge (locally known as Garden Bridge) was towed away, renovated, fitted with neon lights, and returned to its landmark location spanning Suzhou Creek at the north end of the riverfront boulevard. The gently pulsating neon lights perfectly complement the graceful steel trusses of the 104-year-old bridge, turning this simple but elegant structure into one of the city’s top free-of-charge attractions, as advertised by the name Waibaidu, which means “free crossing” in Shanghainese. If you’re not lucky enough to be gazing at the bridge from a suite at The Peninsula, the historic steel span is best viewed from the Zhapu Street bridge a block to the west.
The Bund’s makeover continued with the 2010 waterfront renovation, which added broad sidewalks in front of the historic buildings, a spacious riverfront promenade and a new tunnel that now carries most car and truck traffic beneath the Bund, reducing noise and commotion on the boulevard that lies between the water and the buildings and adding greatly to the Bund’s overall appeal.
Further improvements are under way at Rock Bund, a Xintiandi-style remake of existing old buildings at the north end of the Bund along Suzhou Creek. The long-delayed project was set to soft-open earlier this year, but has been postponed until at least 2012.
Meanwhile, various landmark openings have added further lustre to this essential city showcase. The Peninsula is a brand-new building that incorporates every possible improvement learned in the last 150 years of hotel keeping, while the Peace Hotel is a faithfully restored 82-year-old Art Deco icon. The Waldorf Astoria combines the best of both worlds, with the Long Bar, Pelham’s New York restaurant and 20 suites located in a century-old English Renaissance heritage building on the Bund, while guestrooms, lobby, and other amenities are in a newly built tower that opens onto Sichuan Road, a block west of the Bund.
The Long Bar, the hotel’s signature feature, is a heritage revival of an institution of the 1920s located in the same building. The modern version is a visual feast of dark timber panels, blond stone highlights and richly detailed ceiling wells. It is big enough to convey a sense of grandeur but small enough to concentrate its energies and generate a rich sociable warmth enhanced by live music, raw oysters and classic mixed drinks. The Zaza cocktail, an intoxicating swirl of gin, Dubonnet and Angostura bitters is sure to catapult drinkers back to the previous century.
The hotel’s heritage building, complete with the signature neoclassical cupolas, columns and gables of its era, is connected to the new tower wing by a long skylight atrium that includes Peacock Alley, a couch- and table-lined walkway where tai tais can swan to and fro and strut their tail feathers. Soaring above the alley is a spacious courtyard that is highlighted by the elegant façade of the historic Gao Deng office building.
History renewed
A few blocks farther north, Canada’s Fairmont group has made a bold US$64 million gamble, betting that modern travellers will embrace genuine 1930s-style ambience, with décor and fittings that closely approximate the glamour of old Shanghai. At the Fairmont Peace Hotel, those bygone days and nights of dancing on sprung-wood floors and sipping gin and whisky under the starry skies of eastern China – if not stepping past the opium dens and seedy underworld parlours – have been faithfully re-created on the Huangpu waterfront.
To modern eyes, this property is subtle and understated rather than grand and sweeping; classy and restrained rather than jaw-dropping. Its rooms and chambers unfold like a series of jewel boxes, all on a human scale and all with eye-catching details and dim, almost ghostly lighting. At the back of the hotel Fairmont has built a new luxury lobby where cars can drop off guests, and entering the building from the bright new lobby is like walking from broad daylight into peaceful twilight.
The hotel offers two perspectives that hint at scale, if not grandeur: from the front door on the Bund a long linear hallway pierces through the ancient octagonal lobby and on to the new lobby at the back, while the guestroom hallways likewise offer arrow-straight perspectives and eye-pleasing length.
Overall, the design detail is superb: in every direction lie vintage-style lamps, dogs rendered in stained glass or perched atop octagonal columns – dog racing was founder Victor Sassoon’s favourite pastime – wrought-iron scrollwork, etched crystal reliefs and herringbone maple wood floors, among many other highlights. Yet inevitably, such a process involves compromises. The building’s classic Art Deco design, with its emphasis on smooth linear exteriors, vertical lines and axial symmetry, dictates against balconies, while its 1929 pedigree has left it with small elevators, tiny windows and pocket-sized public spaces. Similarly, the “Gilded Age” décor sometimes clashes with modern minimalist sensibilities.
Nevertheless, in this cookie-cutter world, the Fairmont Peace is resolutely atypical and absolutely unique, and how often can that be said of any property? And yes, that sextet of friendly old guys can still be found in the Jazz Bar, belting out big band tunes, while an ancient drummer – visitors from the early 1990s will recognise him – struggles to keep up with his band mates. In that sense little has changed, and the Jazz Bar remains wildly popular and a must-see stop on any Bund cocktail tour.
House with a view
Just north of the Fairmont Peace is the House of Roosevelt, formerly home to Jardine Matheson, which is by far the least ambitious of the Bund newcomers. It has a well-stocked wine cellar on the second floor, with 2,500 labels and more than 20,000 bottles of wine displayed in a nook-and-cranny layout that rewards exploration. The Roosevelt’s wine cellar is like the vast collection of an eccentric uncle, a drinker’s delight that has, somewhere back there, a vintage to suit every taste and budget.
In the back of the house is a little-used courtyard that showcases the ever-present stonework of Roosevelt’s heritage Bund 27 location, and on the third floor there’s a private club, but most visitors head for the restaurant and lounge on the top floor. With its Naugahyde chairs, fake-wood veneer tables and lightly stained floors, the top floor of the Roosevelt – featuring a lounge bar flanked by an outdoor patio on the north side, and an indoor-outdoor dining area on the south – is more akin to a casual family restaurant than it is to its more glamorous Bund neighbours.
The casual décor is redeemed by the house’s reasonable prices and vast outdoor balconies, and by its cheerful food servers, who make up for a lack of polish by being quick and attentive.
But Roosevelt’s chief virtue is location: it sits along the lazy loop of the Huangpu that lies closest to Pudong, so guests can admire up-close views of the endless churn of barges, coal boats and tourist ferries that ply the river, and of the bright and crazy skyline of Xujiahui on the opposite shore. Surely old Shanghai had its share of casual venues, and House of Roosevelt fills this niche admirably.
Although the newcomers have seized the headlines, the original waterfront purveyors of gilded Shanghai elegance – the Glamour Bar and its partner-in-chic, M on the Bund restaurant – remain as classy and popular as ever. Bund 18 is still there as well, with its ever-changing suite of high-end restaurants and nightclubs, including some of the city’s most popular drink-and-dance, see-and-be-seen venues, complete with snotty European staff and doors that don’t close until dawn. And Three on the Bund, with its resolutely modern interiors and vertical selection of restaurants and bars, likewise remains a firm favourite.
These pioneers, brave though they were, never seemed enough to shift the city’s centre of gravity from the old French Concession back to the Bund. But with the addition of the four newcomers, which will soon to be joined by the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, the city’s entertainment spotlight has returned to the waterfront, where the action was more than a century ago.
Understated style
The Bund’s revitalisation is all about opulence and glamour, but other projects focus more on the subdued elegance of old Shanghai.
Liquor Factory
InterContinental Shanghai Expo (1188 Xueye Road, Pudong New Area, tel +86-21-3858 1188), opened last year, consists of a new building tower with a sweeping view of the Expo sites and a cluster of historical redbrick villas that once belonged to a baijiu (white liquor) factory. These 1930s houses serve as function venues and luxury accommodation options, as well as home to this British pub. Inside, Mod London, The Beatles, mini coopers, mini skirts, football and retro furnishings create a playful atmosphere and guests can also play pool outside or simply relax amidst the garden surroundings.
Jiashan Market
Established in 1979 as the Shanghai Knitting Factory 25 (F25), this complex is located in the city’s former French Concession. In 1984, the factory closed down and the space became a wet market until 2009, when the adjoining shikumen (meaning “stone gate”) neighbourhood was demolished to make way for a high-rise development. It prompted the revitalisation of Jiashan Market and the complex now consists of lofts, shops, restaurants and bars. The renovation work has maintained much of the original personality of the structure, with the indoor and outdoor spaces complementing each other to form a community vibe. The current range of culinary offerings is small but of high calibres. Café Sambal (http://cafesambal.com), which first opened in Beijing, has a branch here, serving its signature Nyonya cuisine. The interior décor is industrial chic, with high ceiling and exposed bricks. The upstairs wood-deck terrace is a nice space to hang out, although it is currently looking at an unsightly construction site.
Hotel Indigo
InterContinental’s Hotel Indigo line of properties boast “local elements” and the Shanghai property (www.shanghai.hotelindigo.com), located at the southern end of the Bund, is a perfect showcase. Formerly the office tower of a bank, the building looks rather uninspiring from the outside. But once inside, you’ll feel like you have been taken into an art gallery of the “Shanghai story”. Everything from walling made of scrap metal from local shipyards to posters of 1930s Shanghai calendar girls harks back to the history of the Paris of the East. Pay attention to the carpet or elevator walls and you will realise that the patterns are inspired by the city’s roadmap. In the rooms, lanterns, Chinese-style carved-wood furnishing and wall pictures of iconic buildings such as the Chenghuang Temple continue the theme. But it goes beyond mere aesthetics: local snacks such as White Rabbit Creamy Candy and even those that are no longer easy to find are offered throughout the hotel for a touch of “home”.
The Langham, Xintiandi
Since opening its first phase in 2001, Xintiandi, a cluster of old shikumen houses restored as a retail and dining complex, has become a Shanghai landmark. The Langham, Xintiandi (http://xintiandi.langhamhotels.com), opened earlier this year, is where you want to stay if you like to be in the middle of action. Walking out of a state-of-the-art hotel and crossing the road to a piece of old Shanghai is an experience in itself. But the biggest draw is the hotel’s access to One Xintiandi, an exclusive clubhouse converted from an old alley mansion in the complex. The catering department can help organise functions in this magnificent venue.
How to get there
Travellers from within China are in luck, as the high-speed rail connecting Shanghai to Beijing soft-opened in June, cutting travel time from 10 hours to five, at 300kph. Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and other nearby delta towns have already joined the high-speed rail network.
Shanghai is also forging new cruise links, as the Shanghai Port Wusong Cruise Terminal has opened at the confluence of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. The new facility can accommodate larger cruise ships than the Shanghai Port International Cruise terminal on the North Bund.
As for air links, Pudong International Airport (PVG) is served by most major international and local airlines. Its connectivity continues to expand with China Eastern (www.flychinaeastern.com) adding Rome Fiumicino to its network in March and United Airlines (www.united.com) launching daily Boeing 777-200ER flights to Los Angeles (LAX) on May 20. In April, American Airlines (www.aa.com) increased its LAX-PVG frequencies, with daily flights on the route.
The city’s smaller Hongqiao International Airport has connections with Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Tribute to Art Deco Because it was the first new building on the Bund since the Bank of China opened in 1937, and because it occupies a key stretch of waterfront above the Waibaidu Bridge at the mouth of Suzhou Creek, The Peninsula Shanghai was designed under the watchful eye of the Beijing government, which insisted, among other things, that the new building be neither tall nor intrusive. Beijing got what it wanted: the hotel has a plain exterior that makes no particular architectural statement, and it is unobtrusive and doesn’t steal the thunder of its older Bund neighbours. But The Peninsula got what it wanted as well: a property owned by the group and located on the Bund. “It took a long time to satisfy all those requirements,” says regional director of communications Cecilia Lui, explaining why the Peninsula group, the city’s pre-eminent hotel company during Shanghai’s pre-war heyday, took so long to return to the city that made it famous. Inside, The Peninsula Shanghai gives a nod to the past by unveiling Art Deco-design elements, including brass elevator doors decorated by the swept wings, deltas, fans and chevrons so typical of the style. Still, the Peninsula could never be mistaken for anything other than what it is: a brand-new luxury hotel designed and executed in a modern style, rather than an evocation of old Shanghai. It has, however, taken the art of room design to a whole new level. For example, guestrooms feature VoIP phones that deliver free long-distance communication at the push of a button; memory card readers that allow guests to see their photos on 46-inch screens; plus humidity control, transparent sock drawers, valet boxes, nail-drying fans and many other features that are most decidedly not from the glamour era. Here’s one more: the bathtubs have a phone button, and if a guest pushes it the swirling bubbles cease and the TV falls silent. “You can have a conference call and nobody will ever know you’re in the bath,” points out Cecilia Lui. How 21st century of them.
