Huangpu River

The  Huangpu , formerly romanized as Whangpoo, is a 113 kilometres (70 mi)-long river flowing through Shanghai that was first excavated and created by Lord Chunshen, one of the Four Lords of the Warring States during the Warring States Period (475 BC - 221 BC). It is the last significant tributary of the Yangtze before it empties into the East China Sea. The Bund and Lujiazui are located along the river.

The Huangpu is the largest river in Shanghai, with Suzhou Creek being its major tributary. It is on average 400 meters wide and 9 meters deep. It divides the city into two regions: Pudong to its east and Puxi to the west. (Dong and Xi mean 'East' and 'West' respectively in Mandarin Chinese.)

In February and March 2013, thousands of pig carcasses were found floating in the Huangpu River in Shanghai. Some of the pigs carried ear tags saying they were from Jiaxing, so that city in Zhejiang may be the source; however local farmers deny that.

Bridges

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest Chinese city by population and the largest city proper by population in the world. It is one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of China, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. It is a global financial center, and a transport hub with the world's busiest container port. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the south edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, and is bounded to the east by the East China Sea.

For centuries a major administrative, shipping, and trading town, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to European recognition of its favorable port location and economic potential. The city was one of five forced open to foreign trade following the British victory over China in the First Opium War while the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1844 Treaty of Whampoa allowed the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The city then flourished as a center of commerce between east and west, and became the undisputed financial hub of the Asia Pacific in the 1930s. However, with the Communist Party takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was reoriented to focus on socialist countries, and the city's global influence declined. In the 1990s, the economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of the city, aiding the return of finance and foreign investment to the city.

River

A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; examples are "run" in some parts of the United States, "burn" in Scotland and northeast England, and "beck" in northern England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague.

Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Water generally collects in a river from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g. from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general.

The Bund

The Bund or Waitan (simplified Chinese: 外滩; traditional Chinese: 外灘; pinyin: Wàitān; literally: "outer bank"; Shanghainese: nga³thae¹) is a waterfront area in central Shanghai. The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road (East-1 Zhongshan Road) within the former Shanghai International Settlement, which runs along the western bank of the Huangpu River, facing the high, modern skyscrapers of Pudong, in the eastern part of Huangpu District. The Bund usually refers to the buildings and wharves on this section of the road, as well as some adjacent areas. It is one of the most famous tourist destinations in Shanghai. Building heights are restricted in this area.

Name

The word bund means an embankment or an embanked quay. The word comes from the Persian word band, through Hindustani, meaning an embankment, levee or dam (a cognate of English terms "bind", "bond" and "band", and the German word "Bund", etc.). Mumbai's Apollo Bunder and city names like Bandar Abbas and Banda Aceh share the same etymology. Various "bunds" in East Asia may therefore be named after the bunds/levees in Baghdad along the Tigris, the name brought there when the Baghdadi Jews such as the prominent Sassoon family settled their business in Shanghai and other port cities in East Asia the 19th century and built heavily on their harbours. In these Chinese port cities, the English term came to mean, especially, the embanked quay along the shore. In English, "Bund" is pronounced to rhyme with "fund".

China Seas

The China Seas consist of a series of marginal seas in the Western Pacific Ocean, around China. They are the major components signifying the transition from the continent of Asia to the Pacific Ocean. They have been described in terms of their collective vastness and complexity:

Seas included in the China Seas are:

References