Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street

Nanjing Road is Shanghai’s best-known commercial street, and the section of middle Nanjing East Road closed to vehicles is what people mean by the pedestrian street. It links the Bund at its eastern end to People’s Square at its western end, and plenty of visitors use it simply as the route between those two points. That is a perfectly good use of it, and often better value than making a special trip to shop.

What it is, and what is actually on it

The street is a straight, wide, paved walkway lined on both sides with department stores, chain brand shops, long-established names, snack counters and souvenir stalls, with seating and lighting down the middle. Its role is the most mass-market kind of shopping street: chain brands, everyday goods, inexpensive clothing, cosmetics, phones and accessories. There is a great deal of everything and very little that is unique, and many of the shops can be found in other Chinese cities as well.

Among the buildings, the handful of department store blocks put up in the last century are the street’s rare historic element and worth looking up at. After dark, when the lights are on, the commercial atmosphere is stronger than in daylight and the crowds are heavier. There is also a paid sightseeing train of the sort found on tourist streets, which is useful if you are tired, though the distance is not long to begin with.

What to buy here, and how to time it

Cheap small gifts for colleagues, mass-market clothing, shoes and bags, everyday items and snacks are what this street genuinely does well. What it does not suit: anything sold as “silk”, “pearl” or “jade”, calligraphy and painting, and any high-priced item where you are being pressed to pay on the spot. On a street this full of visitors, those are the categories where problems cluster.

On timing, weekday mornings through about two or three in the afternoon are the most comfortable. Weekend and holiday evenings are shoulder to shoulder, and walking the street then takes about twice as long as usual. The walk itself is only around twenty minutes end to end, but once you start going into shops, two or three hours disappear easily, so plan it as a stretch of shopping rather than a quick pass-through.

If all you want is to get from People’s Square to the Bund, walking straight through works and costs nothing. If you want to buy something more substantial, the western stretch of Nanjing Road around Jing’an suits that better, and there is no reason to hunt for it here.