Shanghai's iconic underground shopping center!
The underground Hong Kong Shopping Center at People's Square, one of the oldest and longest underground marts in Shanghai, closed today when its lease expired.To get more news about shopping district in shanghai, you can visit meet-in-shanghai.net official website.
The nearby D Mall, also underground and often confused with the shopping center, remains open.
Both venues opened in 1995 near the People's Square Metro station, about two years after the city's first Metro Line 1 opened. Now the city has 18 lines in operation, with a daily ridership of over 10 million people on an average workday.
"I saw on social media that this place is closing so we came all the way from Minhang District just to commemorate our first date," said Liang Qin.
Now in his early 40s, Liang visited the underground mart with his former high school girlfriend, now his wife, and their two children.
"It's so nostalgic! We used to date here after school and ran into classmates who also came here to date. We still came back a few times on anniversaries while in our 30s, but then we sort of forgot this place. I didn't even know it remained open all these years!" he said.For Liang's generation, the two underground malls were among the coolest places in the city back then, when Hong Kong in a venue's name implied that it was fashionable and chic. It was where many took their first purikura (a Japanese sticker photo booth) pictures, had their first date, got their first ear piercing, and bought their first accessories.
Over nearly three decades, the mall has changed dramatically, leaving few spots that Liang and his wife would recognize. It constantly updated to catch up with the city's ever-changing youth culture.
"The previous shop owner who sold boutique clothes told me she was losing business to online vendors and couldn't afford the rent anymore," a shop owner surnamed Chen told Shanghai Daily.
"That was around eight years ago, and I started by selling Japanese animation merchandise and expanded into other related stuff. Business was good and there are lots of gatherings by different ACG groups on weekends, even last weekend as many heard that the place is closing."
Chen is moving to the nearby D Mall as are others in the underground shopping center.
ACG, or animation, comic and games, has become a collective memory of this mart for those born after 1995, including 17-year-old Kiki Feng, who visited the underground venue for the last time with her cosplay friends.
"For us, this is a street of three things that dry up your wallet, we jokingly call this the 'three deep hole bankrupt street'," she explained, "The three deep holes are a Lolita dress, JK school girl uniform and hanfu (traditional Han costume), which all cost a fortune if you are really into them. I'm personally very into Lolita dresses."
The high school senior wore her Lolita dress, a type of fashion highly influenced by Victorian clothing and styles from the Rococo period. She also brought some Lolita-style accessories and game-related merchandise, hoping to exchange them with others who share her interests.