14 July 2018, Saturday
For our final full day in Shanghai, we only had one objective today – shopping! We would be moving on to Zhangjiajie tomorrow and we knew that shopping opportunities there would be scant, so we made full use of our last day in Shanghai to shop to our hearts’ content. We left our hotel at about 10am and took the Metro from Yuyuan station to Shanghai Science & Technology Museum station, five stops away. The train ride took 16 minutes and cost CNY 4 (S$0.83).
Dad and I had already come here yesterday for a site recce and assessed that it would be a suitable place for us to shop. The place in question is formally called A.P. Xinyang Fashion & Gifts Market, though it is colloquially known as the “Fake Market”. This is apparently Shanghai’s last remaining market selling knock-off goods, hence its nickname.
This underground market is really quite massive, with hundreds of stalls selling clothes, bags, shoes, accessories, electronics, mobile phone gadgets and more. The aisles are wide and the market is fully air-conditioned, making it a comfortable place to spend a few hours.
The quality of the items sold here is generally good and you can be assured that they are all not authentic, so don’t come here thinking that you will score a great deal by snagging a cool North Face backpack at only 10% of the regular price in boutique stores. You get what you pay for.
Many of the stalls sell the same items. From a quick walk around, you can get a sense of what the latest trends in fashion are and which brands are currently in vogue. I saw plenty of Under Armour apparel and T-shirts sporting the logos of youth cult brands like Palace, Supreme and Anti Social Social Club.
Our intention for coming here was not really to buy fake goods, but to indulge in more affordable shopping. Even though the prices are already quite low, you should definitely still bargain when you’re here. For most Asians, haggling is second nature because we have had plenty of practice when visiting similar markets in Southeast Asian cities like Bangkok and Hanoi Besides, with numerous stalls selling the same goods, you can simply walk away and try your luck with another vendor.
Bargaining is part of the fun, but don’t go overboard by quoting unreasonable prices. For me, I will happily buy something as long as I feel that the quality is good and the price is acceptable. No point spoiling your day and the vendor’s day by squabbling over a few yuan. They have to make a living after all.
We spent about 3½ hours shopping here, including lunch break. I bought a few T-shirts and everyone else bought stuff too, but no one really went crazy with their purchases. At about 2:15pm, we proceeded to our second destination, Qipu Road. We took the Metro once again and alighted at Tiantong Road station, five stops away.
Qipu Road (七浦路) is sometimes also known as “Cheap Road”, because the Chinese pronunciation of “Qipu” sounds like “cheap”. Imagine saying it with a Chinese accent. However, the nickname also makes sense because Qipu Road is where you’ll find a series of wholesale shopping malls. Each mall is several storeys high and each mall has a few hundred small shops, so you can practically spend the whole day here.
Collectively, this is Shanghai’s largest wholesale apparel market. Being a wholesale market, the shopping environment is not high-end or elegant but the prices are low. The fashion is geared more towards the locals’ taste so the clothes sold here are not so suitable for us. Unlike the “Fake Market” that we visited earlier, most of the shops here are not selling knock-offs of famous brands but rather, original creations catered to the local market. As such, we didn’t spend a lot of time here.
After that, we hopped on the Metro and alighted at Xintiandi station, four stops away. Xintiandi (新天地) used to be the French Quarter of Shanghai during the early 20th century. Many of the old buildings have been preserved and repurposed. It has since become an upmarket area with lots of fancy restaurants, cool bars and stylish boutiques.
The area is famous for its Shikumen (石窟门) houses, which translates as buildings with rock cave doorways. These residential houses have vaulted stone door frames and wooden doors. The lanes are usually narrow and make good photography spots. In a way, the Shikumen houses are the representative residential architectural style of Shanghai, like what the hutongs are to Beijing.
As it was a Saturday evening, Xintiandi was buzzing with many well-heeled locals and expatriates out for a nice meal. There were many fancy cafés and restaurants here, like Greyhound Café and Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill. They were all very stylish and atas (Singaporean term for high-class), but not really our scene. In the end, we chose a mid-range restaurant called Simply Thai and had Thai food for dinner. Simple but delicious.
After that, we didn’t have anywhere else to go so we took a slow walk back to our hotel. It wasn’t a very eventful day but certainly a relaxing one. And that’s the end of Day 75. Time to pack our bags once again as we get ready to depart Shanghai tomorrow for Zhangjiajie next. Exciting!