Bund Sightseeing Tunnel

Kitsch fibre-optic light show in a tube under the Huangpu River

Five minutes of pure bizarre — a small driverless pod-train running through a tunnel under the Huangpu, walls and ceiling pulsing with fibre-optic light shows while an English-Chinese voiceover announces "magma!" and "meteor shower!" at random. It is the slowest way to cross the river and by far the most expensive.

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel is a Shanghai classic and definitely worth doing once. The cheaper, more interesting alternative is the regular Huangpu River ferry from the Jinling Road dock — 2 RMB and an actual view.

things to do sight the bund
A story
The tunnel was built in 2000 to connect the Bund and Pudong by foot — but rather than a simple walkway, the engineers decided on a pod train running through a tunnel lit by ever-changing fibre-optic light shows, with random Chinese narration like 'cosmic universe', 'meteor shower' and 'magma'. The result is one of the strangest tourist attractions in Asia.