AsiaScoop   

Shanghai Malls

Photos by Katie Salisbury

“They’re trying too hard to be Western and they’re getting it all wrong,” my friend George remarked to me as we walked down Nanjing West Road past another large mall complex. In spite of being Chinese-American and having family who live in China, he still experienced the same astonishment that most foreigners experience when they see Shanghai for the first time.

Contrary to the images of lush green rice paddies, tile-roofed palaces, and several-storied pagodas traditionally conjured up by the mention of China, a visit to its premier city greets travelers with an example par excellence of China’s rapid push towards modernization. Wander the streets of Shanghai and sooner or later you’re bound to run into a shiny, well air-conditioned mall stocked with ten stories worth of consumer goods and equipped with enough escalators to accommodate a daily traffic flow in the tens of thousands.

The institution of the shopping mall is a relatively new phenomenon in China, a country that is now Communist largely in name only. Consumerism as a way of life and mega-malls that require day-long shopping marathons are commonplace enough in the United States, but similar developments in “Communist” China are often met with surprise because they were formerly unimaginable. Just 30 years ago, most Chinese citizens had no use for money and instead relied upon the central government’s distribution of ration tickets to acquire food and other goods. In stark contrast, today’s China boasts a burgeoning market economy while its most modern metropolis and economic center, Shanghai, has evolved into a veritable consumer heaven.

I too, like most other Westerners, was intrigued by the pervasive impact of consumer culture I observed on my first trip there. It was hard not to recognize a profound contradiction between the modernity and prosperity promised within the gleaming walls of so many shopping malls and the gritty reality faced outside by everyone else who could not afford the first-world prices of such retail centers.

At first glance, the infiltration of capitalism into modern Chinese society appears to be an almost entirely negative development that only exacerbates the widening gap between rich and poor. For example, Shanghai malls offer a wide selection of international brands like Mango, French Connection, Armani Exchange, Esprit, Nike, Adidas, Burberry, Uni Qlo, Gucci, Zara, and H&M, and all at the same prices we would expect to pay in the U.S. A shirt we might buy for $30 in the U.S. would cost 225 yuan, an amount equivalent to some people’s monthly salaries. Even white collar workers make much less than their foreign equivalents, usually anywhere from US$265 to $1000 a month.

High prices, however, do not prevent people from buying expensive, international brands they cannot afford. Several different university students I spoke to mentioned friends who saved money to buy athletic shoes or leather handbags by cutting out other expenses and setting aside several months’ worth of paychecks. One student said her friend saved for three months to buy a 6,000 yuan handbag, but hid the true cost from her parents, telling them it cost only 600 yuan.

Another student said a friend of hers scrimped on meals for three months to save enough money for a pair of Nike sneakers. Apparently, her friend was satisfied with his 1,000 yuan purchase. As she explained it: “When he wears them he feels very happy, very proud of it, and very comfortable.” Many, though, rather than take penny pinching to its extreme, simply opt to window shop and try on things for fun.

Some popular malls, with names such as Grand Gateway, Raffles City, and Super Brand Mall, bustle with crowds on evenings and weekends, receiving up to 200,000 shoppers on a good day, but many remain empty with sales clerks anxiously waiting to greet any potential customers that pass their way. Local Shanghainese even have a nickname for these retail flops — “ghost malls.” Yet wealthy Southeast Asian developers from Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia keep building more malls.

Within the municipality of Shanghai there are 37 shopping centers in operation and 30 more in construction or development. According to an article from the Sing Tao News Group, government officials in China’s Commerce Union have begun to express concern. Wang Yao, vice secretary general of the Commerce Union, told reporters, “Currently, shopping malls are in a state of blind and aimless development, which is a problem.” Yao also expressed his worry that the future of China may be one full of innumerable, empty malls or what he calls “dead” malls.

The appearance of shopping malls throughout Shanghai’s urban landscape, though, is not necessarily perceived as a negative development by local Shanghainese. A retiree named Zhang Xiaofan, who has lived in the Jing’an district of Shanghai for most of his life close to a string of malls that have been constructed in the last decade, thinks the construction of shopping malls like Plaza 66 on Nanjing West Road is a positive development.“Originally, there were very few shops in that square and the place wasn’t that great – it was just a fruit stand and inside the square were lots of small alleyways,” he told me. “Then it was transformed into a mall. It doesn’t matter if you buy anything there because you can still enjoy the nice environment inside.”

Shanghai’s malls aren’t just for the spendthrift. Anyone and everyone can enjoy all that these spaces have to offer without spending a single dime. And these malls have a lot to offer — an endless variety of products, shelter from the elements, clean and modern spaces, and, most important of all, toilets. They also provide a fair share of entertainment and excitement for shoppers, ranging from weekly promotional events and midnight sales to fashion shows and rock concerts.

Often, after stepping foot inside the cool air-conditioned climate of a shopping mall, I found myself in the midst of an enraptured crowd of hundreds, if not thousands, gathered inside watching some kind of mall extravaganza or another. I attended special events ranging from a concert with performances from the Chinese popstar Wang Xiaokun to children’s piano recital to an English pop song singing competition.

Once, somewhat to my chagrin, I was persuaded by a friend to participate in the Westgate Mall’s “Foreign Friends Carnival” or what I like to think of as a “lao wai” spectacle. In front of awed Chinese shoppers, a group of foreigners pitted against Chinese volunteers from the audience took part in contests like throwing rope lassos around the horns of a cow skull, a tire-stacking relay race, Chinese tug of war, beer, pizza, and watermelon eating contests, samba dancing with Brazilians, darts and the limbo. Although at the time I found the experience both amusing and embarrassing, the Chinese crowd was loyal throughout, exclaiming an “aiyo!” now and again when someone missed the darts bull’s eye.

Even so, the multitude of people one may see at a shopping mall at any given time do not necessarily reflect a corresponding number of retail sales. As a matter of fact, many malls actively brainstorm and experiment with different ways of getting mall visitors to actually make a purchase there. Especially during the summer sale season, Shanghai malls frequently hold late- night sales – until 1 a.m. – that offer increased savings or month-long promotions that reward consumers with gifts when they spent above a certain threshold.

One of the most popular malls, the relatively new Singaporean owned venture Raffles City, posted a special notice board in its main lobby for the month of August. For each hour of the day, the board recorded the buyer who spent the most and how much they spent. When I asked mall employees about the promotion it was unclear if there were any awards other than prestige for being named the highest spender of the day, but the board also provided a small chart that seemed to encourage shoppers to aim even higher to be the highest weekly spender and so on.

In spite of all the glamour and first-world amenities possessed within the mall walls, I discovered that some of the most interesting things were happening just outside the mall doors. Sitting outside to observe the comings and goings of mall life, I often found myself drawn into a dynamic Chinese public sphere made up of weathered old beggar women collecting recyclable bottles, motorcycle taxis looking for fares, cell phone toting, white collar professionals waiting to meet friends, teenage girls campaigning for American Idol-like singing contestants, migrant workers — many Chinese call them “floaters” or “blind drifters”— sleeping next to sidewalk planters, retirees meeting up for an evening walk, and the list goes on.

Though the widespread presence of shopping malls in Shanghai is a staggering sight to many Westerners that signals the emergence of capitalist consumerism in China, there is still something uniquely “Chinese” about the kinds of experiences one can have at a shopping mall in Shanghai, inside and out. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” may well be Beijing’s official economic slogan. In reality, as Shanghai’s malls testify, much of China is fast adopting “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.”

About the Author

Katie Salisbury graduated from Stanford University in the spring of 2007 with a degree in the humanities and a minor in Chinese language. She is currently finishing up a master's in sociology at Stanford and keeps herself busy as one of the editors-in-chief of the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs. She is a native Californian but often parts with the sunny climes she grew up in to travel the world and experience different cultures firsthand. Although she would probably never say as much, Katie secretly considers herself as a writer and, from time to time, finds herself encumbered with thoughts that only putting pen to paper can relieve.