Xujiahui Shopping District

Xujiahui Shopping District (徐家汇商圈, Xújiāhuì Shāngquān) is one of the busiest retail districts in the west of central Shanghai. It is a place to shop in large malls and department stores, but it is also an unusually good place to see how a mission settlement became a commercial centre. The 2024 city business-district plan names Xujiahui among the international-level consumption clusters.

Shanghai’s 2022–2035 commercial plan names it one of the city’s 29 city-level commercial centres, about 0.8 km² with some 500,000 m² of planned shop and mall floor space. It is also one of the centres the plan groups into an ‘east international consumption cluster’ around the Bund and Lujiazui.

The name means “Xu family junction” and refers to Xu Guangqi (徐光启), a scholar-official of the Ming dynasty who had an estate here and was buried here. In 1847 the Jesuits chose Xujiahui as the base of their Jiangnan mission and built a church and a large complex on land given by the Xu family and others. The surviving cathedral has its own page: Xujiahui Cathedral. From 1914 the area lay just outside the French Concession, though under strong French influence. After 1949 many of the former mission estates became factories.

The retail district grew in the 1990s. Chinese Wikipedia dates Huilian (汇联百货) and Oriental (东方商厦) department stores to 1991-1992, and English Wikipedia says the factories were largely sold and cleared by the end of the decade. Metro City (美罗城), at 1111 Zhaojiabang Road, officially opened in May 1998 and is recognisable by the large glass sphere on its front; two exits of Xujiahui station open into it. Grand Gateway Plaza (港汇广场) is dated to 1999 by Chinese Wikipedia, while English Wikipedia says the complex, with its two office towers, was completed in 2005 after construction stopped in 1997 and resumed in 2002. The two sources do not agree, so treat the mall’s start date as uncertain.

The core of the district is the crossing of Hongqiao, Huashan, Zhaojiabang and North Caoxi roads. Chinese Wikipedia gives wider limits: Guangyuan Road to the north, Wanping Road to the east, Yishan North Road to the west and Nandan and Xietu roads to the south. Alongside the malls are older institutions. Xujiahui Park was built between 2000 and 2003, and the Xujiahui Observatory building opened to visitors in December 2013.

Getting around: Xujiahui station is served by Metro Lines 1, 9 and 11, and it is the simplest way to arrive.