The Wuhan Bund



Customs House, constructed 1922.

Cornerstone laid by Sir Frances Aglen, Inspector General of Customs. The original Customs building was constructed in 1862. Aglen was dismissed from his post in 1927 after growing too powerful for the banking interests. Banking and customs were intertwined in the foreign concessions. The last foreign Inspector General was an American, Lester Knox Little, who resigned in 1950.



The Wuhan Bund in the 1920s

The Bund,2011

I’m leaving China in a few days and for my last posting to this blog wanted to visit one of my favorite parts of Wuhan, the old foreign “concession” area in Hankou. Thirty years ago this was a neglected area. Most of the colonial-era banks and trading houses on the Bund that runs beside the Changjiang (Yangtze River) were boarded up. There wasn’t much traffic along the river road then.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting place to visit. Jianghan Lu was a dull shopping street, not the bustling pedestrian mall it is now, but as one reached the corner of Jianghan Lu and turned onto the Bund adjacent to the former Customs House, one had the sensation of stepping into a European city.

You wondered about the history of these buildings: who’d designed and built them, and what had happened to their one-time occupants during China’s upheavals in the twentieth century: the fight to overthrow the Qing Dynasty which had decimated Hankou in the 1910s; nationalist attacks on the concessions in the late 1920s; the epic 1938 Battle of Wuhan against the Japanese invaders, followed by Japanese occupation; the civil war of the 1940s; the political turbulence of the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention periodic flooding of the whole riverfront area. And, finally, starting in the late 70s, the astonishing economic boom.

View of former English concession, 1930s



Art deco building, visible in 1930s picture above this one, is still a bank

Over the past decade the city government has refurbished buildings along the Bund and in the foreign concessions area, some of them fine examples of period architecture, particularly 20s art deco. Informational plaques, some in English, have been put up on the buildings identifying the building’s original owner, builder and designer. Informative historical markers are scattered around the old concessions section.


Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, 1917



American consulate, 1905

 The former American consulate, built in 1905 in baroque style, one of the most attractive buildings along the half-mile stretch, has been beautifully restored; it now contains Hubei government offices. The imposing former Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building is now Everbright Bank; its lobby with classic frosted glass skylights, marble columns and chandeliers, looks much as it must have done almost a century ago.

Restoration of the ornate Banque de l’Indo-Chine building, once French-owned, was just completed; scaffolding went up a few weeks ago around The National City Bank of New York building in preparation for a facelift.



The National City Bank of New York, 1921

 Perhaps it’s a sign of China’s renewed self-confidence that these old buildings, reminders of the humiliating unequal treaties foreign powers imposed at gunpoint in the nineteenth century, are being so carefully restored. They are a draw for Chinese and foreign visitors, a quietly distinctive part of a city that in its helter-skelter development resembles any number of cities.

Foreign concessions were enclaves controlled by foreign powers, each administering its own concession area and developing a culture and architecture distinct from the rest of China. Institutions typical of the foreign country – churches, hotels, taverns, a racetrack, restaurants – made the concession feel like home for foreigners.

Foreign concession area Hankou, 1920s

Former YMCA building

Wuhan’s concession at its height in the 1920s was a narrow strip of land a few blocks wide, running west to Zhongshan Dadao, which marked its western boundary. The British established their concession in 1861, the French and Russians in 1886, Japan in 1898. The area prospered as Wuhan became an industrial center and key trading port in China’s modernization drive of the 1910s and 20s. Most of the big commercial and bank buildings date from that period. The U.S. had no concession area in Wuhan, but the American presence in the area is evident, not only in the consulate but in the old YMCA building, well-preserved and still in use (though not by the YMCA), and in missionary-related former churches, residences, and schools scattered throughout the concession.

The concessions were neutral ground during the 1911 republican revolution, although there was fighting all around the concessions as Qing imperialist forces shelled opponents across the river in the rebel capital of Wuchang and rebels replied. Frederick McCormick in the Flowery Republic (1913) writes that Hankou was the only place in China where foreigners were caught between the lines of contending Chinese armies. Foreign warships came up the Changjiang to protect the foreign concessions; there were as many as twenty-two British, American, German, and Japanese warships anchored near the Hankou concessions at one point. Foreign women and children were evacuated at the height of the fighting. Three quarters of Hankou was destroyed during the battle. 

Revolutionary forces in Hankou 1911 revolution

 After the Manchu overthrow, the concession system began to dissolve. The Russians returned their concession area to Chinese administration in 1920.

1926 flood


In 1927, following a major flood the year before, the British Concession was attacked by Chinese nationalists; British and American naval landing parties came ashore to protect the concession. The British agreed to surrender the concession following a two year transition period.

British concession 1927 after attack: barricades, warships

 Japanese and French concessions returned to Chinese control after the war. The “concession” period was over, but the old buildings remain, put to new uses, a favorite site for young couples to pose for wedding pictures.


Wedding pictures on the Bund



A residential street in the foreign concessions area