72DESTINASIAN.COM – AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019FLASHBACKLong before the development of the Bund, Shanghai’s main street was Nanking (later Nanjing)
Road, a store-packed thoroughfare where Chinese shop clerks rubbed shoulders with merchants
of the city’s International Settlement, established by the British after the Treaty of Nanking in- Running west from the Huangpu riverfront to the Shanghai Racecourse (now People’s Park),
the Nanjing Road of the 1920s and ’30s was a hub of concession-era life, traversed by clanging
trolley cars and bordered by grand facades. According to local historian Xiong Yuezhi, a visiting
Charlie Chaplin had silk shirts tailor-made here, while down the street, Albert Einstein lectured on his theory of relativity. Tod ay, t he t wo -
kilometer stretch is officially called Nanjing Dong Lu (“East Road”), to distinguish it from its westward extension Nanjing Xi Lu (renamed
from Bubbling Well Road in 1945). And while many of the grand buildings are still there—albeit draped in neon—the trolley cars and
rickshaws are long gone, and so are the motorcars: most of Nanjing Road East was pedestrianized in 2000. Still, after all these years, the
lure of Shanghai’s legendary shopping street continues to draw the crowds. —David Tse
/ Shanghai /
1936
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