外滩

The name 'Bund' comes from an Anglo-Indian word meaning embankment. After 1843 the strip was part of the Shanghai International Settlement - foreign banks and trading houses built it up with neoclassical, Art Deco and Beaux-Arts palaces between the 1910s and 1930s. The skyline across the river at 陆家嘴 (Lujiazui) is the 21st-century answer to that history.

外 = outside, 滩 = beach/bank. Literally 'outer bank' - named because it lay outside the old Chinese walled city of Shanghai, along the riverbank.