Unloved Pudong – It was Ever Thus and Ever a Bridge Thing

Poor old unloved Pootung (now having to be called Pudong for a start to its troubles) – seems nobody has ever much liked it (I blog on the Bund and a hundred people or more retweet it; on Gaoqiao and one person does!). Most of the time it appears on the old maps as a wasteland, and empty apart from the river front go-downs and docks. Old China Hands that are about as genuine as a faux European town in the Pudong boonies like to brag they knew Pudong when it was just dirt tracks and chicken farms – they didn’t; they lie.

It’s true Pudong was always a tough beat – there were markets, but of the flea/junk or young orphan girls for sale type; there were bars, but they sold sam shu and Hanshin rot gut rather than Stengahs and Chota Pegs; there were cemeteries, but only the nameless, indigent and poor got buried there. Sailors did a bit of roistering, but took most of their money to Hongkew; Pudong working girls were the most clapped out and, should you be stuck there, you would, like today, be left with the ignominy of being surrounded by awfulness (dirt poor and dock/industrial then; some of the world’s worst architecture and most soulless streets now) and staring across hopelessly at the Bund. Personally I’ve only ever visited Pudong for three reasons 1) to get to the airport 2) because someone was offering either to pay or repay me and 3) because there was a free drink in it (actually these are also the only three reasons I would ever go to Luton but anyway…).  Not that there aren’t certain charms in arriving – the Jinling Road ferry was often a pleasure on an early spring morning, but in general – yuk.

Of course the main problem, and the primary reason why one side of the Whangpoo got art-deco and neo-Gothic splendour and the other side got warehouses, was lack of bridges. Although technically outwith the Settlement, like the Western Roads (and who doesn’t love “outside the Settlement” Xinhua Road etc etc), it could have been developed but for lack of bridges to connect it. Daily commutes on sampans are charming for a week and then just a a bit of a drag! But thus was it ever – here, in 1930, the problem is noted in the newspapers….