Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
SUZHOU CREEK
The unassuming area along Suzhou Creek is a world away from
brash, flash Shanghai. The city has evolved more slowly here, with
less redevelopment, and a walk here makes a refreshing change.
DISTANCE: 4km (2.5 miles)
TIME: A full day
START: Waibaidu Bridge
END: Jade Buddha Temple
POINTS TO NOTE: Take the subway to Nanjing Road station (line
10), from where it's roughly a 15-minute walk to Waibaidu Bridge at
the northern end of the Bund. Alternatively, you can take a taxi and
ask to be dropped off directly at Waibaidu Bridge.
Cross over Suzhou Creek the old-fashioned way, via Waibaidu Bridge 1 [map] (Waibaidu
Qiao, on the northern end of the Bund). Until 1856, the only way to cross Suzhou Creek was
by ferry, but when the foreign residents of the International Settlement found that inconvenient,
a British entrepreneur decided to build a wooden bridge, naming it Wills Bridge after himself.
Chinese residents resented being charged a toll to cross Wills Bridge, while foreigners
crossed free of charge. After the Shanghai Municipal Council bought out Wills in the 1870s
and eliminated the toll, the Chinese began calling it the Waibaidu Bridge - the 'free bridge'.
The structure we see today is its 1907 replacement, called the 'Garden Bridge' by foreign res-
idents. From 1937 to 1941, it served as the demarcation line between Japanese-occupied
Hongkou and Zhabei and the rest of the International Settlement; it was guarded by turbaned
Sikh policemen of the Shanghai Municipal Police on the Bund side and Japanese soldiers on
the occupied side.
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