Today, many former treaty ports have repurposed their historical waterfronts to project a modern, globally connected image. But how did foreign intervention and commercial expansion shape the modernization of the Bund in these port cities? In the Chinese context, major cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai often take centre stage. In contrast, Xiamen—a key maritime hub in southeast China and one of the treaty ports that was forcibly opened under the Treaty of Nanjing—has received less attention.
My article focuses on the Xiamen Bund and explores its past, shaped by global trade, the British concession, and local ingenuity from the 1830s to the 1930s. By examining key moments of the bund transformation—such as the grassroots construction of jetties, the contested formation of the British concession on the Beach Ground, sovereignty disputes that reshaped urban governance, and the embankment project that modernized the waterfront—we can move beyond traditional narratives that often depict these cities as passive recipients of modernity. Instead, it was a process of constant negotiation, where foreign interventions, indigenous agencies, and transnational networks shaped the city’s trajectory.
This research was presented at the AMPS Conference in December 2023. It aligns with the theme of Local Cultures – Global Spaces: Communities, People and Place by demonstrating that modernization in treaty ports was a negotiated process where local cultures adapted, resisted and redefined global influences to create new urban identities.
Forming an in-between place: urbanisation of the Beach Ground, Xiamen (1842–1930)by Ruoqi Yu (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China) is published in Architecture_MPS, volume 30.

Ruoqi Yu is a PhD candidate at the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong. Her research explores the impacts of heritagization on the built environment of overseas Chinese hometowns, with a particular focus on Xiamen. The publication Forming an In-between Place provides a foundational piece, offering a historical framework for understanding how transnational connections and historical narratives shape China’s urban landscapes—a theme that is central to her dissertation work.
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