East Nanjing Road

On the southwest corner of East Nanjing Road and Zhejiang Road stands Wing On Department Store—its name means “lasting prosperity.” The site for it was chosen with the help of two sacks and a handful of beans.

In nineteen fifteen, Guo Le and Guo Quan, merchant brothers, came to Shanghai to open a large store. They earned their initial capital in Australia: they began as hired laborers and peddlers, then traded in fruit. After the success of their Hong Kong department store, the brothers looked for an address on Shanghai's busiest shopping street.

On the north side of East Nanjing Road, the Chinese Sincere Department Store was already under construction. The Guos decided to place a competitor directly opposite it: two large stores were meant to draw more shoppers than one. It remained to determine which side had more foot traffic. The brothers sent two employees to different sidewalks. Beside each lay a full sack and an empty one. For every person who passed by, the counter moved one bean. This continued for several days. In the evening, the beans were counted; time after time, the south side won.

The plot belonged to the Shanghai landowner Silas Hardoon. He offered a contract that was easy to refuse: the brothers would pay high rent, build the department store themselves, and after thirty years would have to leave Hardoon the building and all its equipment free of charge. Construction was delayed because of a shortage of money, but the Guos signed the contract. The customer traffic counted with beans was meant to pay for the building before the building ceased to belong to them.

On September fifth, nineteen eighteen, Wing On Department Store opened. Goods were displayed in large windows along the street—before this, Shanghai stores had made almost no use of the sidewalk as a display room. Inside, the Guos set up dozens of retail departments, a hotel, an ice rink, and a dance hall. They held clothing shows, issued gift certificates, and allowed regular customers to record purchases in a special book in order to pay later. People came here for an item, then stayed to have lunch, seek entertainment, or spend the night in the hotel. It was department stores like these that turned a walk along East Nanjing Road into an activity in its own right.

The profits allowed the Guos to erect a nineteen-story wing beside it in nineteen thirty-two. Two enclosed bridges connected it to the old store: shoppers moved from building to building above the street. This was a direct result of the brothers' first decision—to gather people in one place and keep them here as long as possible.

The lease expired in December nineteen forty-six. By then Silas Hardoon had died, and his adopted son decided to sell the real estate he had inherited. Guo Quan bought back the department store that, under the original contract, he was meant to lose.

After several renamings, the building regained the name Wing On Department Store in two thousand five. Opposite it, the former Sincere Department Store is occupied by the Shanghai Fashion Store. The two old department stores still stand on opposite sides of East Nanjing Road—where the Guos' employees once emptied two sacks in the evening and counted the beans.