[1] From the 1860s to the 1930s, it was the rich and powerful center of the foreign establishment in Shanghai, operating as a legally protected treaty port.

The Shanghai Bund has dozens of historical buildings, lining the Huangpu River, that once housed numerous banks and trading houses from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Russia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and Belgium, as well as the consulates of Russia and Britain, a newspaper, the Shanghai Club and the Masonic Club.

Magnificent commercial buildings in the Beaux Arts style sprang up in the years around the turn of the 20th century as the Bund developed into a major financial center of East Asia.

However, with the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, many of these financial institutions were gradually moved to Hong Kong in the 1950s.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the thawing of economic policy in the People's Republic of China, buildings on the Bund were gradually returned to their former uses.

Also during this period, a series of floods caused by typhoons motivated the municipal government to construct a tall levee along the riverfront, with the result that the embankment now stands some 10 metres higher than street level.

Also in this period, the ferry wharves connecting the Bund and Pudong, which had served the area's original purpose, were removed.

The first stage of the plan involved the southern end of the Bund, and saw the demolition of a section of the Yan'an Road elevated expressway, including removal of the large elevated expressway exit structure that formerly dominated the confluence of Yan'an Road and the Bund.

The primary incident[6] took place near Chen Yi Square, where a large crowd, estimated at around 300,000, had gathered for the new year celebration.

[7] The bund is one of the most prominent features when viewed from the Shanghai World Financial Center in Pudong and its observation deck on the 100th floor.

(This park is the site of the infamous sign reported to have proclaimed "no dogs or Chinese", although this exact wording never existed.

At the northern end of The Bund, along the riverfront, is Huangpu Park, in which is situated the Shanghai People's Heroes Memorial Tower — a tall, abstract concrete tower constructed by the Shanghai government in 1993 to serve as a memorial commemorating Chinese revolutionary martyrs, as well as those who have died fighting natural disasters in China.

A number of companies offer Huangpu River cruises (boat tours) departing from the wharf; all of the major buildings in the Bund, and in Pudong, are illuminated each evening.

[11][12][13][14] The Bund was featured in the 1984 novel Empire of the Sun by British author J. G. Ballard, based on his experiences as a boy during the Japanese invasion and occupation.

The opening pages of the 1999 novel Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson are set on the Bund in November 1941, as civil order collapses under the threat of Japanese invasion.