Introduction
Walk south from Shanghai's Bund waterfront along the former Bund Road, past the row of colonial-era buildings that now house banks, hotels, and luxury restaurants, and you are walking through a landscape that was designed to make a statement. The buildings — neoclassical, gothic, baroque — were built by British, French, American, and Japanese architects for foreign banks, trading houses, and consulates. They were built to say: we are here, and we are permanent.
They were not permanent. By 1949, every foreign concession in China had been dissolved, every colonial building was under Chinese control, and the era of treaty ports — the century-long period when foreign powers operated semi-autonomous enclaves inside Chinese cities — was over.
What remains are the buildings. They are still there. You can visit them. And if you know what to look for, they tell a story that is more complicated than the simple colonial narrative.
What Were the Treaty Ports?
The treaty port system began after the First Opium War (1839–1842). The Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1842, opened five Chinese cities — Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai — to foreign trade and residence. Foreign nationals in these cities were subject to their own country's jurisdiction, not Chinese law. They formed municipal councils, built their own infrastructure, and operated as parallel governance systems inside Chinese territory.
Over the following century, the number of treaty ports grew to over 70. They were not all the same. Some, like Shanghai's International Settlement, were large, wealthy, and sophisticated — home to stock exchanges, opera houses, and racing clubs. Others were small: a foreign trading post, a customs house, a handful of foreign residents. But all shared the same legal basis: the unequal treaties that gave foreign powers rights inside China that China did not have inside foreign countries.
For foreigners visiting China today, the treaty port remnants are some of the most visually striking and historically layered places in the country. They are also, deliberately, the places that have been best preserved — not because China is nostalgic for the colonial period, but because they represent architectural heritage and, in many cases, commercial value.
Shanghai: The Bund and Former International Settlement
The Bund (外滩, Waitan) is the most visited treaty port remnant in China. The row of 52 buildings along the Huangpu River waterfront, built between the 1870s and 1940s, is one of the most famous architectural streetscapes in the world. Most visitors photograph the buildings from across the river, from the Pudong skyline. Fewer visitors walk the Bund itself, and still fewer look at the buildings carefully enough to understand what they are.
The Architecture
The Bund buildings represent multiple architectural periods and national styles. The former British Consulate (now the Waldorf Astoria) is Romanesque Revival. The former Shanghai Customs House (now the Shanghai No. 1 Society) is neoclassical with a clock tower modeled on the Big Ben in London. The former Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building (now the HSBC Building) is neoclassical with a dome. The former Russian Consulate is baroque.
Each building was built by a different foreign power for a different purpose. Together, they constitute a visual record of which countries had economic power in Shanghai at which periods. The British dominated the early period; by the 1920s, American and Japanese influence was growing. The architecture reflects this.
The Former French Concession
The French Concession (法租界) is south of the Huangpu River, roughly corresponding to today's Xintiandi and Former French Concession neighborhoods. Unlike the International Settlement, which was administered by a multinational council, the French Concession was administered by France. The result is a different urban texture: tree-lined streets, low-rise colonial houses, a more domestic scale.
Walking through the Former French Concession today, you can still see the physical legacy. Many of the buildings are now boutique hotels, restaurants, and galleries. Some of the old Shikumen (石库门) lane houses — traditional Shanghai townhouses with distinctive stone gate frames — have been preserved and converted into commercial spaces. Xintiandi is the most famous example: a row of Shikumen houses, gutted and rebuilt around a modern shopping and dining complex.
The Peace Hotel and the Question of Memory
The Fairmont Peace Hotel (和平饭店) — originally the Cathay Hotel, opened in 1929 — occupies a prominent position at the southern end of the Bund. It is one of the most famous hotels in the world, known for its Art Deco interiors and its history as a gathering place for foreign celebrities, gangsters, and spies in the 1930s.
The hotel has been carefully preserved and actively marketed. Its history is presented through guided tours, museum displays, and hotel branding. This is not unique to the Peace Hotel — many former colonial buildings in Shanghai have been converted into heritage hotels or museums that present their history selectively.
The selective presentation is itself historically significant. The treaty port period is not a comfortable chapter in Chinese history, and the way it is remembered — what is emphasized, what is downplayed, what is celebrated — reflects contemporary political and commercial priorities. Visiting these places with an awareness of what is being remembered and what is being forgotten is part of understanding what they actually are.
Tianjin: The Former Foreign Concessions
Tianjin's treaty port history is, in some ways, more legible than Shanghai's because it has been less commercially exploited. The former foreign concessions — British, French, American, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian, Austrian-Hungarian, Belgian — occupied a significant portion of the city. Many of the buildings remain, largely in their original condition, in areas that are not major tourist destinations.
The Italian Concession
The former Italian Concession (意式风情区) is the most coherent and most visited of Tianjin's former concession areas. Italian traders and missionaries were present in Tianjin from the 1860s, and in 1902 the Italian government formally established a concession. The area contains dozens of Italian-style buildings, including the former Italian Consulate, the former Italian Club, and dozens of residential buildings in Italian architectural styles.
The Italian Concession has been restored and developed as a commercial and tourist district. It is pleasant to walk through and the architecture is genuinely distinctive. But the restoration has been thorough enough that it feels more like a theme park than a living urban district — which is itself a comment on how Chinese cities have chosen to handle their treaty port heritage.
The Former British and French Areas
The former British concession in Tianjin is less coherent as a tourist destination but more interesting as an urban landscape. The buildings — former banks, trading houses, and consulates — are scattered throughout the Heping District. Some are occupied by government agencies or state-owned enterprises; others are in commercial use; some stand empty.
The Former British Club (now the Tianjin People's Art Theatre) is one of the most architecturally distinctive buildings from the concession period. The Former Russian Consulate, now largely forgotten, is a Tsarist-style building that served as the headquarters of the Soviet embassy after the Russian Revolution and was later used by the Chinese military.
Xiamen: Gulangyu Island and the International Settlement
Gulangyu Island (鼓浪屿), just off the coast of Xiamen in Fujian Province, was an international settlement under a unique administrative arrangement from 1902 to 1945. The island was governed by a multinational committee with representatives from Britain, France, the United States, Japan, and other powers, each of which had extraterritorial rights in their designated areas.
The result is an island that looks like a small European town. The colonial architecture — Catholic and Protestant churches, colonial houses, a piano museum — is remarkably well preserved because Gulangyu was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. The designation was controversial, partly because it highlights the colonial nature of the island's history, but the preservation is genuine.
Walking Gulangyu today, you are walking through a physical record of the international settlement period. The piano museum (which houses a collection of antique pianos from around the world) reflects the musical culture of the foreign residents. The colonial houses reflect the architectural tastes of different nationalities. The absence of cars (no vehicles are allowed on the island) gives the streets a pre-modern feel that makes the historical landscape more legible.
Qingdao: German Colonial Architecture
Qingdao (青岛) in Shandong Province was a German colony from 1898 to 1914, when it was captured by Japan during World War I. The German colonial period was short but left a distinctive architectural legacy: Bavarian-style buildings along the coastline, a German-style railway station, and a beer brewing tradition that led to the founding of Tsingtao Brewery.
The German architecture in Qingdao is arguably better preserved than the colonial architecture in any other Chinese city, partly because the buildings were well built and partly because Qingdao's economic development has followed a different trajectory from Shanghai or Tianjin. The former German Governor's residence (now the Qingdao Museum) and the former German post office (now a restaurant) are among the most photographed buildings in the city.
The German colonial period is also more politically complicated than the British or French periods, because Germany was not one of the powers involved in the Opium Wars or the most aggressive treaty-making of the mid-19th century. The German presence in Qingdao was exploitative — it involved the forced lease of Chinese territory — but it was not part of the same pattern of systematic humiliation that characterizes the British and French experience. This makes Qingdao's colonial heritage more ambivalent than Shanghai's, which is reflected in how it is presented today.
Guangzhou: Shamian Island
Shamian Island (沙面) in Guangzhou was the site of one of China's first treaty ports, established after the First Opium War. It was divided into two concession areas — British and French — and the two national characters are still visible in the architecture: the western end of the island is more British in character, the eastern end more French.
Shamian is smaller and more contained than the Shanghai Bund or Tianjin concessions. It is a small island — about 330 meters wide and 900 meters long — and the colonial buildings are concentrated along its perimeter. Walking the island takes an hour at most. But the density of historical architecture is remarkable for its size.
The buildings include churches (St. Francis Xavier's Church on the British side, the Shamian Church on the French side), former consulates, former banks, and former residential buildings. Many are now used as government offices or cultural institutions. The island has a different atmosphere from the other treaty port remnants — quieter, more residential, less commercialized.
What the Buildings Actually Tell You
Visiting treaty port remnants without context, you see old foreign buildings in Chinese cities. With context, you see something more interesting: a physical record of a specific historical period, a record that is more complicated than simple colonialism.
The treaty port system was exploitative. That is not in dispute. Foreign powers used unequal treaties to extract economic and political concessions from a weakened Chinese state. The system perpetuated Chinese weakness and enriched foreign investors.
But the treaty ports were also places of remarkable cultural exchange, technical innovation, and cosmopolitanism. The first modern newspapers in China were published in Shanghai's foreign concession. The first modern universities were founded there. The first stock exchange. The first public parks open to all nationalities. The first modern sanitation and water systems.
This complexity is not a reason to celebrate the treaty ports. It is simply a reason to understand them as what they were: a historical phenomenon with multiple dimensions, whose physical remnants deserve to be visited with the same complexity of understanding you would bring to any significant historical site.
FAQ
Can I visit treaty port sites freely? Yes. All of the treaty port sites mentioned in this article are open to visitors without restriction. Some buildings (active government offices, private residences) are not open to the public, but the exteriors can be viewed from the street.
Is it appropriate to visit colonial heritage sites in China? Yes. These sites are recognized as part of China's architectural and cultural heritage and are protected by law. They are presented in local museums and tourism materials. Visiting them respectfully, with an understanding of their historical context, is entirely appropriate.
What is the best way to visit Shanghai's Bund? Walk. The Bund is best experienced on foot, starting from the southern end near the Peace Hotel and walking north. Cross the Huangpu River on the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel (a tourist attraction in itself) or by ferry (¥2) to see the Bund from across the river. Then explore the Former French Concession on foot, using the colonial-era Shikumen architecture as your guide.
Are there treaty port sites outside the major cities? Yes. Treaty ports existed in dozens of cities, including Chongqing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Ningbo. In many smaller treaty ports, the colonial buildings have been demolished or repurposed beyond recognition. In a few — Zhoushan, for example — some original buildings remain.
How should I understand the colonial history when visiting? Read the historical plaques that are posted at most major sites. Visit the local history museums. Talk to local historians if possible. Be aware that the interpretation of treaty port history in Chinese museums tends to emphasize the exploitative dimensions of the colonial period, which is historically accurate but represents one side of a complex story.
Conclusion
The treaty port remnants in China are not ruins. They are not monuments. They are functioning parts of contemporary Chinese cities — hotels, offices, restaurants, museums — that happen to have a history that predates the People's Republic. Visiting them, you are simultaneously visiting a commercial district and walking through a century of contested history.
The buildings were built to last and to make a statement. They succeeded. A hundred years later, they are still there, still making that statement — though the meaning of the statement has changed with every generation that looks at it.