ACGN culture injects new blood into Nanjing Road
Anime fans greet "Ultraman" at the Bailian ZX Creative Center, happy to click his pictures.
Anime culture has injected vitality into Shanghai's bustling commercial Nanjing Road with the opening of the Bailian ZX Creative Center.
Nanjing Road, with more than 150 years of history, is one of Shanghai's iconic commercial streets, and its eastern section known as Nanjing Road Pedestrian Mall is dotted with time-honored shops. The Bailian ZX Creative Center aims to inject new blood into the old walking street.
The seven-floor mall provides an immersive space of ACGN (animation, comic, game and novel) culture, hoping to create a place of pilgrimage for ACGN culture fans in China.
Crowds line up outside the mall.
It features some of the world's renowned brands such as the first overseas store of Tamashii Nations and the first Chinese store of Mega House – both selling premier toy collections of Bandai.
According to a report by China Insights Consultancy, the scale of the domestic ACGN industry reached 63.2 billion yuan (US$9.3 billion) in 2021, with a huge user base of nearly 460 million people. The industry will witness a boom in China it is becoming increasingly acceptable not only to the Gen Z group but also other age groups.
