The Huangpu River is the mother river of Shanghai. Nanpu Bridge, Yangpu Bridge and Oriental Pearl TV Tower compose of a huge picture scroll. The Bund is the cultural section of Shanghai that best represents the blending of ancient and modern influences. This renowned waterfront district is the city's most famous landmark. Local people honor the Huangpu River as Mother River, and as you view the lights and spectacle from the deck of your evening cruise, you will understand why.
Between the stately colonial edifices along the Bund, the glittering skyscrapers on the eastern shore of Pudong, and the unceasing river traffic, there is plenty to keep your eyes from ever resting. Besides offering a privileged view of the bridges that span the Huangpu, the cruise boats also offer an excellent view of the famous colonial-era buildings that make up the Bund, buildings such as the Peace Hotel with its unique pyramid roof in blazing green and the Customs House with its large clock tower.
The main ticket office of Huangpu River Cruise is opened daily, and the schedule usually includes a full morning cruise (from 9am to 12:30pm) and a full afternoon cruise (from 2 to 5:30pm). Both these full cruises make a complete circuit of the Huangpu to its mouth. The Huangpu River cruise company also offers a night cruise from 7 to 9pm, splendid when the lights are on the Bund and Pudong, but this voyage does not go downriver to the Yangtze. Cruise schedules vary depending on the season, and on weekends additional cruises are sometimes added.
There are several tour lengths that one can sign up for, from a short, 30-minute cruise to a long, 3½ hour cruise. The 30-minute cruise passes the Bund, then proceeds on northward to the area designated as the New Bund, and on to Binjiang Avenue of Pudong, a newly developed economic district, where the cruise boat reverses itself and proceeds back to its point of origin at Shiliupu Pier, south of the Bund. All of the Huangpu River Cruises are of course round trips. The 1-hr excursion proceeds beyond Pudong as far as Yangpu Bridge, while the 2-hr excursion ends at Nanpu Bridge farther north, both very graceful suspension bridges (a bridge reveals its beauty more readily when viewed from the side, which is the view provided by a Huangpu River Cruise). The longest excursion lasts 3½ hours, and ends at Wusongkou Harbour, not far from the mouth of the Huangpu, which empties into the great estuary where the Yangtze meets the East China Sea.
Besides offering a privileged view of the bridges that span the Huangpu, the cruise boats also offer an excellent view of the famous colonial-era buildings that make up the Bund, buildings such as the Peace Hotel with its unique pyramid roof in blazing green and the Customs House with its large clock tower, and though not to everyone's taste, behind the original Bund area now shoot up tall skyscrapers. Those who defend the modern skyscraper background would claim that though the new buildings dwarf the colonial buildings of the "old" Bund, they do not compete with them - or even mar the view - but rather, they almost seem to highlight the older-period buildings as gentle, rounded "foothills" to the soaring, "jagged peaks" of the skyscraper background.
A Huangpu River Cruise is "history revisited" in the sense that it affords many glimpses of Shanghai's past during the period, the beginning of the 20th century through WWII.
On the return trip to Shiliupu Pier, as you pass the Shanghai International Cruise Ship Terminal near Pudong, you might wish to contemplate on the fact that the cruise liners of many of China's former foes - including those of Japan (and quite possibly those of your own country) - regularly lay up here, and that without their contribution to Shanghai's economy, the city would probably not be the oriental pearl that it is today.