Why Old Shanghai's Tunsin Road was Called Tunsin Road

For years now I’ve come across the odd reference to businesses on Tunsin Road in the old International Settlement of Shanghai – up in Hongkou. Not a very long or prestigious road but intriguing, as I was never sure why it was called Tunsin.

I think I now know the answer. The likeliest answer seems to be that when John Swire (left), the Yorkshire-born tycoon who had founded Taikoo Sugar, came to Shanghai, he saw the potential for steam shipping on the Yangtze River - then the West's only key to trade with China's interior. With the backing of Alfred Holt, and the latter's Clyde shipbuilder back in Glasgow, Scotts’ Shipbuilding & Engineering Company, Swire formed The China Navigation Company (CNCo) - registered in London and with Butterfield & Swire appointed managers in Shanghai.

Swire immediately ordered three Mississippi-style paddle steamers for the new company. But even before these vessels - Peking, Shanghai and Ichang - had arrived in China, he had snapped up the assets of a newly bankrupted line, Union Steam Navigation, which provided valuable waterfront properties along the Yangtze, as well as two steamers. USNCo’s veteran Tunsin (pictured above) was thus destined to become the first vessel to sail under the Swire flag in 1873.

Seems to fit.