Shanghai Xintiandi is a shopping mall.

In the busy streets of the downtown area, usually in the shopping center of a city, there are large-scale and high-class emporiums, in which not only the domestic brands but also many well-known international brands are all sold. Everyday items, cosmetics, household appliances, bedding, clothes, and everything up-market that you wish for can be found easily to satisfy your every need. Bargaining is seldom acceptable, but there are often special promotions or end-of-season sales with an attractive price.

A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area - a modern, indoor version of the traditional marketplace.

Modern "car-friendly" strip malls developed from the 1920s, and shopping malls corresponded with the rise of suburban living in many parts of the Western World, especially the United States, after World War II. From early on, the design tended to be inward-facing, with malls following theories of how customers could best be enticed in a controlled environment. Similar, the concept of a mall having one or more "anchor" or "big box" stores was pioneered early, with individual stores or smaller-scale chain stores intended to benefit from the shoppers attracted by the big stores.