A Night Out in Xujiahui, Shanghai

Xujiahui is a commerce district in Shanghai, China. When I was a very little kid in Shanghai, my parents lived nearby. According to them, I’ve been here hundreds of times. I remember approximately five.

The history of Xujiahui, of which I knew almost none…shame on me. It was named after a Ming Dynasty scientist Xu Guangqi.

I didn’t find myself on the bus there this Saturday night because I was looking to buy anything. I missed just walking around in stores; I haven’t been to the mall in the US since 2019. Even more, I missed the bustling, prosperous feeling of Shanghai. It had been so long since I’d been here, I was almost looking at everything through the eyes of a tourist. Renewed wonder.

Tonight, I was going to just enjoy being here as much as I could before I returned to the US to my low-paid forced labor, I mean uh, graduate school. Yeah, that.

I’ve never seen one of these in the US before. A McDonalds, but only the cafe part.

A tech store. My kind of place.

The Chinese name of this department store means “gathering of a hundred brains”. The English name…is a little more straightforward.

The first thing I saw going in was a Nintendo Switch display.

A little coffee shop on the first floor.

Nintendo Switch is popular in China too it seems. Note the screen with Persona 5, one of favorite RPGs :D

So the Chinese name for Nintendo Switch seems to be “Xiong di dian wan”, or “brothers console”. I think the joycons are the two brothers? As a girl who likes video games, I demand more gender representation.

A lot of floor space was dedicated to the Switch, about an entire floor.

An ad for the switch. “Change at your heart’s desire. Have fun together. Nintendo’s new generation console, Nintendo Switch”. Interesting to see Tencent’s logo in the lower right corner.

As I looked over a rack of games, a shop assistant asked me, “are you looking for single player or multiplayer?” No, just browsing.

PS4 stuff.

Both Switch and PS4 stuff!

Wasn’t Star Wars Battlefront the one everyone was hating on EA for? Wait that’s like, literally everything EA does.

Razer! My husband really hates their keyboards.

Husband: I can’t believe Razer is in China lol. What a shitty company with shitty products.

So, if anyone was planning on buying Razer’s stuff, you’ve been warned.

I thought this door was kind of cool.

Huawei, Apple, and Samsung, all side by side. Huawei seems to be more popular.

Wait, what’s Psyduck doing here? The watch next to it, targeted at kids, is demonstrating its waterproof-ness.

Not pictured: stores selling various brands of cameras, phones, laptops, smart watches, and more. A tech nerd’s heaven. I’ve outed myself as a gamer by taking pictures of mostly gaming stuff, haven’t I?

In the basement, there was food.

The man in blue works for one of China’s food delivery services (like Grubhub). He’s picking up an order.

That’s a lot of books!

Who doesn’t love Slowpoke? Even claw machines are paid for by scanning QR codes now.

So this is the clean-plate thing we’ve heard so much about.

This clean plate sign was in front of a buffet. A deposit of 100 yuan is charged to each table. Only if you have less than 150g of food in your plate can you receive your deposit back. In reality, I’m guessing no one is measuring with a kitchen scale — probably just eyeballing.

Outside, night had fallen.

On a pedestrian bridge above busy traffic.

I wasn’t the only one taking pictures. Shanghai is really a marvel. It honestly makes me a bit emotional. I’m so lucky to be here.

“Shanghai Six Hundred”. Why six hundred? I thought it was supposed to be eight hundred, or something?

Oh dear…I wouldn’t want to be stuck in that traffic.

The directory for one of the department stores across from the bridge.

Awww, they named it after me!

I thought the New Yorker was a magazine? :O

Does this remind you of department stores you’ve been to?

That big ball from earlier is quite intriguing.

Supposedly I’ve been inside that big ball-shaped building before, but I have no memory of it. What’s it like inside?

Where did all these PEOPLE come from?

So many people! Far more than the other stores I was in. This department store had a lot of restaurants, so that wasn’t surprising.

Sooo many people!

Honestly for someone who’s been sitting in isolation for months and months, seeing so many people is a little frightening.

Hmmm…

HMMM…

Just as overpriced in China as it is in the US.

I ate dinner here. A Japanese-style fast food place.

There are a lot of Japanese restaurants in China that serve a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese food. Like American Chinese food, but better.

Mapo tofu and beef over rice. 33 yuan, or about 5.50 USD.

I wish the portion was bigger, but maybe I’m just used to American portions.

The stairs show you how many calories you’re burning by taking them.

A Xiaomi store. I hadn’t seen any in the other department stores.

So many peopleeeee…you get the idea.

A cup of milk tea from a chain store that used to be all the rage when I was in high school.

That milk tea chain used to be on every corner. Now I don’t see them as much. This is obviously because they took my favorite item, pudding milk tea, off the menu. I threw them a bone for nostalgia’s sake.

After I’d had my fill of window shopping, I found my way to the subway and took it home. I pulled my mask down under my nose because I was getting hot and my glasses were fogging over. A security guard told me to put it back up. I briefly considered telling him to mind his own damn business and asking to speak to his manager, but then I realized I could just be a decent human being and put it on properly.

Me.