The Bund Tunnel, Shanghai, China

The word "bund" means an embankment or an embanked quay, and comes from the Urdu word band, meaning an embankment, levee or dam (a cognate English terms "bind," "bond" and "band," the German term "bund," etc.). "Bund" is articulated to rhyme with "fund". The term was brought to Shanghai by the family Victor Sassoon, a Baghdadi-Nepali Jew. There are many "bands" to be found in Baghdad, even today. There are numerous sites in India, China, and Japan which are called "bunds" (e.g. the Yokohama Bund). However, "The Bund" as a proper noun almost invariably refers to this stretch embanked riverfront in Shanghai.
The Shanghai Bund has dozens historical buildings, lining the Huangpu River, that once housed numerous banks and trading houses from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Russia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as the consulates Russia and Britain, a newspaper, the Shanghai Club and the Masonic Club. The Bund lies north the old, walled city Shanghai. This was initially a British settlement; later the British and American settlements were combined in the International Settlement. A building boom at the end 19th century and beginning 20th century led to the Bund becoming a major financial hub East Asia. The former French Bund, east the walled city was formerly more a working harbourside.
By the 1940s the Bund housed the headquarters many, if not most, the major financial institutions operating in China, including the "big four" national banks in the Republic China era. However, with the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, many the financial institutions were moved out gradually in the 1950s, and the hotels and clubs closed or converted to other uses. The statues colonial figures and foreign worthies which had dotted the riverside were also removed.