Trendy shops add vitality to historical Shanghai street
More than a dozen fashionable new businesses are now open on the century-old Yuyuan Road. Among them are a cafe with an industrial-style interior, a cocktail bistro, an izakaya restaurant with a courtyard and a boutique/photography studio selling craft beer.
“Put new wine into old bottles” is what shopkeepers, creative directors and designers did to give the historic neighborhood more color, vividness and artistic flare. Meanwhile, a mini botanical garden featuring sage, sunflower, perilla, basil, mint, rosemary, pepper and eggplant is in full bloom. Another new highlight of Yuyuan Road, 3,000 rape flowers were transplanted from Changxing Island to the garden.
The plant kingdom established by Creater, developer of Yuyuan Road, has become a popular spot on the street and boosted the shops and restaurants alongside.
Residents and tourists have reappeared on the popular downtown street, which is flanked by historical villas and shops.
All the shops along the road have restored operations since early March, and business volumes have returned to normal levels.
There are many shops on Yuyuan Road where you have to queue up to buy coffee or wait for service on weekdays, said Zhao Guangyu, a member of Creater.
As one of Shanghai’s 64 streets that can never be widened to preserve its history, Yuyuan Road and the fashionable stores complement each other.
“Customers need offline experiences,” Zhao said. “People need real experience and communication.”
Zhao believes the collection of fashion elements; the integration of catering, clothing and art is the focus of many young people, and it is the product of modern commerce. For him, the historical block carries the memory of the city and closely connects offline business with urban life, which makes it irreplaceable.
When the weather is good, the indoor space and outdoor seats of the coffee shop are filled. Leo, the owner, said that many guests will take advantage of the good weather to bring their pets to the shop. The coffee shop sells hundreds of drinks per day, he added.
“We just updated our menu with more seasonal delicacies and some are put in our lucky bags,” Leo said.
Steps away stands a flower shop where several blockbuster movies and popular TV series have been filmed. Muzi opened the shop when she was in her 30s and ran it with almost no profit initially.
In the first 30 years of her life, Muzi followed the conventional path: She graduated from the finance department of a prestigious British university and worked in a financial institution in Shanghai for four years.
Finally, she could not resist the desire to run her own business and chose to quit. She rented a 100-square-meter space on Yuyuan Road to open a flower shop. A year later her parents learned about her resignation.
An ice-cream store, where many young couples in down jackets lined up at the door last December, is even hotter this summer.
Kagi, the store manager, brought out a caramel milk tea flavored dessert shop. Even though it was a weekday afternoon, a long line of customers waited patiently to be served. Kagi lived in Taiwan before he launched the business last October. Behind the counter, a young pastry chef was making cherry blossom flavored ingredients. Kagi said the shelf life of this ingredient is just one day.
“Fresh ingredients must be made every day, and those expired must be discarded,” he said.
The most iconic venue on Yuyuan Road is Yuyuan Department Store, where customers flock to take snapshots, enjoy coffee, soda and dessert, or buy designer fashion products.
The vintage-style Yuyuan Department Store features a cafe, shops, an art gallery and retrospective exhibitions. The building at 1018 Yuyuan Road was constructed in 1927 and served as a logistics center of the Jiangsu Road post office.
Upstairs is where writer and translator Shi Zhecun (1905-2003) once lived.
The inner structure of the historical post office has been preserved along with its original pillars, wooden stairs and arched doors.
In line with Creater’s plan, Yuyuan Road is a complex integrating art experience, creative retail and fashion business.
The Yuyuan Department Store, with a total area of more than 600 square meters, can accommodate different businesses, such as cafes, designer fashion brands and art galleries.
The businesses introduced by Creater will jointly develop products based on the theme of Yuyuan Road in the future.
“We’re not building a scenic spot, we’re just demolishing or repairing old things, and adding some public areas for people to interact and exercise,” said Creater general manager Huang Zhiwei.
Why was the renovation of Yuyuan Road focused on art and culture? Huang believes this is the inevitable trend of society: Traditional department stores and commercial formats are pressured by e-commerce, and offline shopping needs to be transformed. He hopes to provide a warm shopping experience, not just a cold deal.
“I hope to do something meaningful so that Shanghai’s urban renewal can become a world landmark and provide a vibrant and friendly neighborhood,” Huang said.
As part of these plans, the Yuyuan Public Market has opened where residents can have a traditional Shanghai-style breakfast and find time-honored services such as key duplication and umbrella repair.
Four nearby buildings will be renovated for retail and cultural exhibitions. One of the stores displays and sells daily items used by local facilities decades ago. An old-school photo studio, a barbershop and a kitchen are tailored for nostalgic visitors.
Designers have also turned seven condos, in an old apartment building on Yuyuan Road, into fashionable flats.
People from around the world can experience “a typical day in Shanghai” when they visit Yuyuan Road. They can stay in a B&B on the street, have fried dough sticks for breakfast, noodles with scallion oil and borsch soup for lunch, and drink coffee in the afternoon.
After several years of renovation, the revamping of Yuyuan Road has moved from the main road to its nearby streets and communities to further benefit residents, according to the Changning District government.
A future high-tech complex will gather top AI companies and startup firms on Dingxi Road, a street off Yuyuan Road. The region will become an eastern hub of the Hongqiao Intelligent Valley, a key technology base planned by the
Changning government.
Another project, the former Printemps Department Store on Dingxi Road, which closed in April, will become a high-tech complex featuring artificial intelligence companies, exhibitions and applications.
With 5G network coverage, for example, AI will analyze the most popular merchandise and work out marketing strategies.
Yet another project, the Yu Jian complex developed from the former dormitory buildings of the Shanghai Workers College of Medical Science, will be preserved and house innovative stores, small eateries and art exhibitions.
A further renovation project is to turn Changning District Workers’ Cultural Palace into a multifunctional ballroom on the street to showcase fashion and creative formats.