Xinxin Department Store: The Store Zhabei Called Number One

Basic facts

This section is about a work unit, not a sight. The building still stands at that corner today, only under a different name; this section is about the stretch of time when it was called "Xinxin".

First, the name: a building that nearly became "Store No. 13"

The name of this building was rescued from "sounding bad".

In the 1980s the plot north of the Gonghexin Road overpass in Zhabei District was to be redeveloped, and a commercial building was newly put up at the Zhonghua Xin Road crossing, where a numbered department store was to be opened too.

Shanghai's "numbered stores" had a sequence: No. 1 Department Store, No. 2 Department Store, No. 3 Department Store… the districts took their numbers in order of appearance. By the time a store was to open in Zhabei, No. 11 and No. 12 had already been opened in Xuhui District — if this new building had kept following the numbers, it could only be called "the Shanghai No. 13 Department Store", shortened to "Store No. 13".

The three characters "Store No. 13" do not sound good in Shanghainese.

So after much consideration another road was taken: this building stands exactly at the crossing of two roads, and in the names of those two roads there is one "xin" each.

• Gonghexin Road
• Zhonghua Xin Road

One "xin" plus one "xin" — "the Xinxin Department Store".

This way of naming is itself very Zhabei: not to fight for a number, but to borrow the two road names under one's feet.

March 1988: a building lit up the north of the city

In March 1988 Xinxin opened its doors.

Its weight in that year can be put in one sentence: the single-structure commercial building with the largest retail floor area built in Shanghai since the founding of the People's Republic, with a retail floor area of 5,000 square metres. The building's total floor area was 6,000 square metres, over 5 floors. It became a place for the residents of northern Shanghai to shop and spend their leisure.

At the time of opening, the Shanghai finance and trade system held a large-scale goods fair to welcome the Year of the Dragon — the goods on show were dazzling, people's mood for shopping ran high, and the leaders of the municipal finance and trade office sat in command in person.

First let us make clear its place in the commercial map of the old Zhabei District. The commercial-street layout of the old Zhabei District was roughly this: to the south, mainly the Tiantong Road commercial street, the old North Station commercial street and the Buyecheng commercial zone; in the middle the Daning International Commercial Centre; and in the north, in Pengpu, the Wenxi Road and Linfen Road commercial streets. Xinxin opened to the south of the middle, at the Gonghexin Road crossing, filling precisely the gap of "the north of the city had no department store".

And that generation's memory of it was like this:

As soon as you stepped into the store, the escalator facing you was packed with residents come to shop and enjoy themselves, and on holidays especially they jostled shoulder to shoulder, a scene without precedent; the store was full of adults shouting and children making a din, and dolls that blinked smiling at you.

What was sold on the five floors, the old finance-and-trade staff still remember: food and toys, knitwear and cotton goods, cosmetics, enamel and glassware — all things needed for daily life.

The name "No. 1 Store"

In the history of Shanghai commerce, the "numbered stores" such as the No. 1 Store and the No. 2 Store were the pillars; in the years when the numbered stores were at their most flourishing, the No. 1 Store was seen as the leader among them.

The old Zhabei District never got the number "No. 1 Department Store". But after Xinxin opened, it was called the old Zhabei District's "No. 1 Department Store" by the residents around it.

Two things about this name are worth making clear:

1. it is popular usage, not a formal shop name, and not an official number — this book records the usage, not conferring a title;
2. it rang loud because of its position: the corner of Gonghexin Road and Zhonghua Xin Road, exactly the spot a district's residents had to pass every day.

A title of "No. 1 Department Store", if it is called out by the neighbours, measures in fact this building's place in daily life.

After 2008: renamed "the Prince Department Store"

Its predecessor was the state-owned enterprise the Shanghai Xinxin Department Store — this sentence can only be said in full in retrospect.

Entering the new century, Shanghai commerce moved from malls of ten thousand square metres to chain supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping centres, and then to e-commerce. 2008 was the year of the financial crisis, and traditional department stores, pinched from several sides, slid steadily downhill.

The thinking in Zhabei District at the time was contradictory: it wanted to change the operating system and break up the situation of "eating from the same big pot", yet was unwilling to give up a business format that provided the community with good goods and service. In the end a former government-office worker, then only 30 years old, took it over, leading the staff along the road of management-rights reform and marketisation.

The signboard it produced was "the Prince Department Store", positioned as a multi-brand store for community commerce, its purpose being "leading community consumption, upholding genuine quality at a true price, caring for the quality of life, focusing on fine brands".

It did not move away; it is still at that corner. By recent years it has traded at the corner for more than thirty years, and every day still about 5,000 visits by nearby residents come in. An old customer living in Zhijiang West Road Subdistrict can walk there from home in under five minutes, and put it very plainly:

"I grew up right here, and this department store is so convenient for the people's life."

From "Store No. 13" to "Xinxin", from "Xinxin" to "Prince" — this building has changed its name twice, and never once moved.

Not to be confused: Nanjing Road has a "Xinxin" too

The name "Xinxin" had another home in old Shanghai, far older than the Zhabei one and far better known. The two have nothing to do with each other.

One thing at the Nanjing Road one deserves a separate note: the Glass Radio Station.

In 1927 the Xinxin Company set up a radio station on the fifth floor of the building, with glass partitions all round, so that customers who came to buy could shop and at the same time watch the broadcasting and the performances. This was the first radio station in Shanghai founded and run entirely by Chinese. It was later closed after a fire, and rebuilt after the victory in the War of Resistance, taking the name "the Kaixuan Radio Station".

And the two words "Kaixuan" later went onto a real historical scene:

On 25 May 1949, Shanghai was liberated. The Kaixuan Radio Station was the first to broadcast the news to the whole city.

So "Xinxin" has two origins in Shanghai: one on Nanjing Road, a department store founded in 1926 by a Cantonese merchant; one at the Gonghexin Road crossing, a state-run company set up by Zhabei District in 1988. This section of the book is about the latter.

A closing word

This section is a little unlike the ones before it.

The locomotive depot, the schools and their like — those can all be placed on the thread of "railway families": work units, yards, school buildings, with names, surnames and files. But a department store building is a place where a district's residents live their lives together.

It is not counted as an ancient site; there is no glorious history on its house number, and it is not on the cultural-relic protection list. Its "historical material" is half written in the newspapers and half written on other families' dinner tables —

on which floor a woollen sweater was bought, at which counter the New Year sweets were weighed out, whether the first ride on an escalator was here.

This book gathers it among the "old work units" because, by this line, it falls on this side:

Is it "a place", or "an organisation"? This building first was a state-run company — an organisation; only today is it a shopping mall — a place.

As with the locomotive depot, this book files it by "which it first was", and tells both stretches of time clearly, without muddling them together.

From "Store No. 13" to "Xinxin" and then to "Prince", this building has walked the whole road of Shanghai's state-run commerce. It is still standing where it was, and that alone is already a file.

Sources: the address of Xinxin (the crossing of Gonghexin Road, No. 567 Zhonghua Xin Road), its opening in March 1988, "the single-structure commercial building with the largest retail floor area built in Shanghai since the founding of the People's Republic", the retail floor area of 5,000 square metres, its being a place for the residents of northern Shanghai to shop and spend their leisure, the escalator scene at the opening, the large goods fair to welcome the Year of the Dragon, the goods sold on the five floors, and the commercial-street layout of the old Zhabei District are based on The Paper's Shanghai Streets and Lanes | There Is a "Nanshan" on Nanshan Road (Grade B); "its predecessor was the state-owned enterprise the Shanghai Xinxin Department Store", the building's total floor area of 6,000 square metres, the 5 floors, the old Zhabei District's name of "No. 1 Store", the 2008 financial crisis and the management-rights reform, the operating purpose, the roughly 5,000 visits a day, and the old customer's quotation are based on Xinmin Evening News, "Old Zhabei's 'Prince Department Store' Rooted at the 'Corner', 5,000 'Fans' Check In Every Day" (Grade B); the naming anecdote that "No. 11 and No. 12 had already opened in Xuhui, so it could only be called the No. 13 Department Store" is based on a book reviewing the history of the Shanghai No. 1 Department Store (electronic text at Youdang.com, Grade C); that the Xinxin Department Store was built at the Zhonghua Xin Road crossing in 1988 and was then the largest commercial building in north Shanghai is based on Huanqiu's "This Road in Shanghai Is 98 Years Old This Year, and Only Getting Stronger" (Grade B); that the Xinxin Company at No. 720 Nanjing East Road was founded in 1926, took its name from "renewing daily, renewing again", was one of the four great department stores, is today the Shanghai No. 1 Food Store and a Shanghai municipal cultural relic protection unit, and closed in April 1949, is based on the Kuaidong Baike entry "Shanghai Xinxin Company" (Grade C); the setting up of the glass radio station on the fifth floor in 1927, its being the first radio station in Shanghai founded and run entirely by Chinese, its later closure after a fire, its rebuilding and renaming as the Kaixuan Radio Station after the victory in the War of Resistance, and its broadcasting on 25 May 1949 of the news of Shanghai's liberation as the earliest to do so, are based on The Paper's "'The First Voice of Shanghai's Liberation' Came from Nanjing Road: a Radio Station on the Fifth Floor of a Department Store" (Grade B). The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.