Little Luzon 小吕宋 Shopping Center in Suzhou's Guanqian Street 观前街
Guanqian Street, being a pedestrian shopping street, was one of the places to go for shopping here in Suzhou. There were a lot of China brand shops here and a sprinkling of western brands too. Their shops however were not the monolithic megamalls which are being built all over the country. There just isn’t any space here. Instead, there were a few shopping centers. These Chinese shopping centers have a certain feel about them. Yes, it doesn’t have that high class feel that is present in modern shopping malls but this is a very Chinese shoopping center feel.
Another Shopping Center in Guanqian Street 观前街 in Suzhou 苏州
I got this feeling when I was visiting Wangfujing in Beijing and Nanjing Road East in Shanghai. Some of the stores there exuded a kind of Chinese shopping center feel which I can’t properly describe. Probably because the buildings looks old and the presentation wasn’t that flashy. I was surprised to see a name of a shopping center which was named 小吕宋 or Little Luzon. I don’t know if that has anything to do with the Luzon Island of the Philippines, although it didn’t appear that there were Philippine made goods there either. I don’t think this is some sort of Lucky Plaza or Worldwide House where Filipinos will be congregating during the weekends.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/GuanqianStreet.kmz} zoom=19]