Foreign Concession Architecture

Jiujiang was one of China's first inland treaty ports, opened in 1862, and the buildings from its British and Russian concession zones survive in scattered pockets around the riverfront district. Unlike the more heavily restored (and heavily touristed) concession areas in Shanghai and Tianjin, Jiujiang's colonial-era buildings are mostly still in everyday use — as government offices, storage buildings, and apartments — which makes for a more honest encounter with the architecture.

The most coherent surviving section is along Binjiang Road and nearby streets west of the city centre, where Victorian-era brick buildings with arched windows and verandas sit alongside twentieth-century Chinese commercial buildings in an unglamorous but historically interesting mix. A few of the old warehouses along the waterfront remain, and the British Consulate building (now a restaurant) has been partially restored. The area is best explored on foot, without a particular destination in mind.

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A story
Jiujiang was designated an open port in 1862 following China's defeat in the Second Opium War. The British and Russian concession zones were established along the riverfront, and by the 1880s there were warehouses, churches, and foreign merchants' residences occupying a substantial stretch of the Yangtze bank. The concession was formally returned to China in 1927, but many of the buildings survived and remain visible — a rare example of treaty port heritage in a city that sees relatively little foreign tourism.