Goodbye 'Bund 18,' hello 'No. 18 Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu'?

Don’t panic yet, but seriously, it might be inappropriate to say "Bund 18" in the future. According to this Eastday report (in Chinese), one of the 2006 government projects -- cleaning up the city's street names -- is going to be finished by the end of this year. There are 838 roads involved in this project: 146 road names are going to be written off, 154 road names are going to be changed and 225 road names are going to be prefixed. (We've checked the street names that will be written off and fortunately they are all in suburbs, like Qingpu, Fengxian and Baoshan)

Wu Jiang, an official from Municipal Urban Planning Bureau, said that the government is going to conduct a general investigation of building names after clearing up the street names. Names like "Bund 18" and "3 on the Bund" will be phased out, he said. "Once you allow buildings on Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu to use names like Bund 18, Bund 5, etc., what happens if the buildings on Guangdong Lu, Fuzhou Lu, and Hankou Lu also start using names similar to that? It will definitely cause a lot of trouble and misunderstanding."

Mao Jia, director general of the bureau, noted that the names of the buildings on the Bund are under negotiation with the various developers -- they are not obligated to take off the name right now but they are urged to change the name next year. According to the regulation, the developers are also going to provide new names for approval. Once the bureau approves any new name, it will replace the current one.

Something tells us this won't be a smooth changeover.

For more info about changed road names, check Shanghai Urban Planning Bureau here (Chinese only), or call their hotline at 969000*7 (also Chinese only). Don't get lost.

Photo from Flickr.