Feeling like shopping in Shanghai? Nanjing Road is said to be one of the world’s busiest shopping street. Nanjing East Road, leading to the Bund area, is closed for traffic and is a generally enjoyable area to walk around in with shiny neon lights and tens of thousands of people crowding up around evening time.
Yeah, the pollution’s horrible, just horrible. But, still, there’s this combination of an attempt at a Japanese style shopping district with some fake looking colonial architecture mixed with the familiar Chinese style family hangouts, and it makes it interesting for the occasional tourist.
It’s hard being a foreigner celebrity at Nanjing East Road. Countryside folks kept harassing me for group photos, salespeople kept trying to hassle me in broken English muttering annoying questions like “you have a girlfriend?”, “you love China?” or “you handsome, so handsome, very cheap”. I still can’t get completely comfortable shopping around in China (Lao Jie Dong Men Ding in Shenzhen being the absolute worst shopping experience imaginable, BTW). If I were to actually live in Shanghai, I might have gone insane. But… that’s shopping districts in China for you, so as a one time tourist thing the positives clearly outweigh the negatives.
Enjoy the atmosphere…
White skin’s important…
I come from a city just near Shanghai. As a result, no matter how croweded the streets are, I like these photos! I do understand that, as a foreigner, the peddlers are annoying you at every moment and trying to sell fake things at quite high price. O(∩_∩)O I wish, in your mind, these don’t represent China’s whole image. There are very beautifu places around China, but it’s a pity that these places are losing their original style.
Yunqipxf – thanks for the comment. ofcourse I don’t see Nanjing rd. as representative of China ^_^ I agree, there are some very beautiful spots around China, and I believe China is facing a real challenge with making fast progress into being a truly modern country while maintaining its own spirit. In my view, Korea, Japan and Taiwan have managed to do that to some extent, I hope China would too.
Great pictures! I love to see the busy streets of Shanghai. Is there any time of the day when it is less crowded? This place is like twenty times busier than Ximending.
I spent most of my life at far way and peaceful locations, may be that is the one of the reason i am keen to visit crowded places. Specially for shopping i prefer such places which are full of people. Shanghai streets are indeed great and contains attraction for foreign.