Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street

Nanjing Road runs from the Bund embankment to People's Square and has remained the main trading artery of Shanghai since the end of the nineteenth century. Its middle stretch, about a kilometre and a half long, is closed to cars, so in the evening there is an unbroken flow of pedestrians between the shop windows and the advertising screens. Department stores of the 1920s and 1930s survive along the street, among them the block with the clock tower at the corner of Henan Road. Behind the art deco facades rise brick high-rises of the same period, and further west the towers of the modern centre come into view. A small tourist train runs along the street, but walking it on foot is noticeably more interesting.

On the map