Bank of China Building

The Bank of China Building (中国银行大楼, Zhōngguó Yínháng Dàlóu) at Bund 23 is the tower with the blue-tiled Chinese roof beside the Peace Hotel. Finished in 1937 as the head office of the Bank of China, it is one of the few buildings on the Bund with Chinese design features, and it still houses the bank’s Shanghai branch.

The Bank of China grew out of the Qing government’s Hubu Bank (户部银行, Hùbù Yínháng), opened in 1904, and took its present name when the Republic was founded in 1912. Its head office moved from Beijing to Shanghai in November 1928, and by 1934 it was the best-capitalised Chinese bank in the country. The site had been the German Club (德国总会, Déguó Zǒnghuì), confiscated after Germany’s defeat in the First World War and bought by the bank’s Shanghai branch. The head office worked in the old club from 1929, and in 1934 the bank decided to pull it down and build.

The design was by Luke Him Sau (陆谦受, Lù Qiānshòu), the architect of the bank’s own building department, who had trained in Britain, with Palmer & Turner (公和洋行, Gōnghé Yángháng) as consultants. The first scheme, drawn up in 1934, was for a 34-storey tower of about 91 metres that would have been the tallest in Shanghai. What was built is 17 storeys and about 70 metres, a little lower than Sassoon House next door. The usual explanation, repeated by the municipal gazetteer, is that Victor Sassoon objected to anything overtopping his pyramid and that the Municipal Council’s works department refused a permit for the taller design. A 2017 study by the Shanghai Banking Museum found no mention of the matter in the Council’s minutes for 1933–1936 and points instead to the silver crisis of 1934, the bank’s finances and the Settlement’s height rules, which tied a building’s height to the width of the street in front: the bank’s board had already settled on an 18-storey scheme in April 1934, and the drawings were cut to 17 storeys in November 1935. The sources also differ on when work started. The gazetteer gives a foundation ceremony in October 1934, while the Banking Museum and other accounts record one on 10 October 1936, presided over by the bank’s chairman T. V. Soong (宋子文, Sòng Zǐwén). The building was completed at the end of 1937.

The main east block has fifteen storeys above ground and two below, on a steel frame of Krupp steel, with a four-storey west block behind. The site is 5,075 square metres and the floor area 32,548. The lower walls are Chinese granite and the elevation is drawn in vertical lines. On top sits a low square pyramidal roof of sapphire-blue glazed tiles, with stone brackets in the form of dougong (斗拱, dǒugǒng) under the eaves; the railings and window grilles use traditional Chinese patterns. A stone relief above the main door showing Confucius travelling among the states was chiselled off during the Cultural Revolution, according to the gazetteer. Inside, by the same account, two bronze doors lead through a revolving door and up 26 steps to a banking hall with eight columns on each side and a vaulted ceiling decorated with the Eight Immortals.

After the Pacific War began the building was taken over by the Japanese-backed authorities, and the bank recovered it after 1945. After 1949 it housed a succession of state financial institutions; the Bank of China’s Shanghai branch is the occupant now. A bank history museum opened on the ground floor in May 2008; it is free, but visits must be booked and, at last report, were limited to groups.