Yuyuan Market - Shanghai, China

One of the famous places for shopping in Shanghai is called Yuyuan Market (or Yuyuan Bazaar). The popular market sees an average of 200,000 visitors per day. The market contains a scenic garden, diverse culinary opportunities and shops that sell just about any gift you could imagine. There is also a silk shop that has a small display area to demonstrate how silk is made. They sell a variety of silk products from small items to bed sheets.

Our bus did not drop us off directly in front of the market. Instead, we walked through the side streets, passing many street vendors and having an opportunity to see the community located next to the market. One of the most impressive things we saw on our walk to the market was a street dance. I have seen groups of Chinese people gather in public areas to do Tai Chi (in New York as well as China), but I have never seen open air dancing before. I shot this brief video because the dancing put a smile on my face.

We had a healthy breakfast at our hotel before venturing out to the market. So we weren't hungry as we passed the street vendors. But much of the food cooking at the street stalls looked appealing.

I took a couple of photos of the sides street and architecture I saw on the way to the market as well.

There was a map outside the entrance to Yuyuan Market to help visitors gauge the layout of the market. The Yuyuan Garden is visible at the top right of the map, with shops and restaurants covering the majority of the market.

We entered the market through a narrow walkway. It felt like all 200,000 people were trying to arrive at once. On the overhead beam, you can see the Yu Yuan Market name written in English across the top.

Our first destination inside the market was the Yuyuan Garden, which charges an entry fee. The rest of the market is free. I will write more about the garden in a subsequent post. After visiting the garden, we had a couple of hours to visit the market. We also ate lunch on our own during that time. All things considered, we did not have a lot of time to navigate the market. As we were nearing the end of our tour, we used this opportunity to purchase many of the items we wanted to bring back home. We purchased about a dozen beautiful two-sided scarves, some Dr. Dre beats, and a host of other smaller gifts. For lunch, we decided to try a famous soup dumpling place that President Clinton visited during his trip to the market. The shop sells a large dumpling the size of a small plate. It comes with a soup straw. To be honest, I like the smaller dumplings better. I didn't care much for the famous dumplings.

This is the soup dumpling place that we tried:

Here are some other sights from the market:

During the visit, we were able to visit a silk museum where we were treated to a demonstration on how the silk is harvested and spun. It was a bit campy, mostly designed to get people to spend money. The shop had excellent prices on silk duvets, which was one of their specialties. It was interesting to learn how the silk is harvested and turned into products, but we didn't end up buying any silk from this shop. There were dozens of shops, most of them selling silk products, throughout the market. We wanted to look around before buying. The double sided scarves were a bit harder to find, but worth the extra money. We found awesome selections, which we brought home with us as gifts.

After our mediocre soup dumpling and shopping, we were off to visit a couple of government run tourist shops. I will talk about those adventures after finishing my experiences at Yuyuan with a post in the coming days about the Yuyuan Garden.

The market is located at No.269 Fangbang Middle Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai 200010, China. It opens at 9:00 am and closes at 10:00 pm.

All photos in this post are my own. They may be reproduced with prior permission.