Among the antique buildings with carved beams and paintings and stacked arches in the Yuyuan Mall, Huabao Building is the most elegant and luxurious. It was once the earliest antique market in Shanghai and the largest handicraft commercial building in Shanghai, and after a year of upgrading, it is now back in the sight of collectors and players.
The newly renovated Huabao Building focuses on high-end tea utensils and tea life aesthetics, connects multiple formats such as exhibitions, collections, auctions, and live broadcasts, links literary collectors, professional institutions and origin craftsmen, and is committed to providing the ultimate oriental aesthetic offline experience, creating the first social national style treasure hunting destination in Shanghai.
This is also a new pace of comprehensive upgrading and transformation of Yuyuan Mall since 2018. At the same time, a new round of urban renewal and commercial transformation in the Yuyuan Garden area is also stepping up.
The arts and crafts market is renewed, focusing on the connotation of tea culture
Walking into the central square of Yuyuan Mall, a four-storey imitation Ming and Qing Dynasty building with carved beams and paintings and palace lamps hanging high stands majestically, which is Huabao Building. Its plaque is inscribed by Mr. Zhou Gucheng, and the word "Huabao" is taken from Wang Bo's "Autumn Day Dengteng Wang Ge Farewell Sequence", which means "Wuhua Tianbao".
Entering Huabao Lou, it is a map of Yuyuan City created by Dai Dunbang, derived from the "Dai Dunbang Painting Old Shanghai Picture Book", inscribed "100 acres of Yuyuan Shangjia City, Millennium Huabao Collection Building", implying that Huabao Lou comes from the deep humanistic memory, watching the original intention and self-iteration of the national art feelings.
According to literature, both the Yu Garden and the Shanghai City God Temple were built in the Ming Dynasty. Before and after the opening of Shanghai, the City God Temple area was already a bustling market. After experiencing the changes of the times, from 1991 to 1994, the building in the southwest of The Lotus Pond in Yuyuan Garden was remodeled and expanded, forming the current Yuyuan Mall, and Huabao Building was one of the several new antique buildings added at that time.
In September 1994, after the completion of Huabao Building, some merchants of the Old City God Temple Handicraft Mall were moved in from the City God Temple Hall. Since then, Huabao Building has been famous at home and abroad for operating various types of medium and high-end arts and crafts, jewelry and antiques, calligraphy and painting works.
The City God Temple and Yuyuan Garden area have always been one of Shanghai's important travel destinations and were also the leaders of China's gold market. With the change of the times, Yuyuan Mall is also in urgent need of brand renewal and upgrading. In 2018, Yuyuan Completed a major asset restructuring and opened a new round of strategic layout. As a world-class cultural landmark under Yuyuan Co., Ltd., the transformation of Yuyuan Mall is also poised to take place.
In October 2018, the Nanxiang Mantou Shop by the Jiuqu Bridge in Yuyuan Garden reopened. In February 2019, Wenchang Street, the "cultural and creative street" in Yuyuan Garden, was renovated. In September 2019, Shanghai's famous Honbang restaurant, Lubo Gallery, was renovated. In October of that year, the cultural flagship store of the Old Temple Jingronglou was also opened in Yuyuan Golden Plaza. In 2020, Yuyuan Department Store and Yuyuan Old Street re-appeared at the same time on October 1.
After a year of renovation and upgrading, Huabao Building has finally appeared to the public. According to Shen Bin, the person in charge of the Huabao Building project of Yuyuan Mall, on the basis of adhering to the richness of Chinese arts and crafts, the remodeled Huabao Building pays more attention to the integration of traditional culture and current life aesthetics, takes tea culture as the core, and then extends to oriental aesthetic furnishings and living utensils such as incense and flower utensils.
Direct access to the country of origin provides an in-depth viewing experience
Shen Bin told First Finance and Economics that the reason for focusing on the vertical category of "tea" is because drinking tea, as a basic way of life for Chinese, has been passed down for thousands of years, and it is a product that is just needed in life. On the other hand, it also has a strong vitality, extensiveness, and the attributes of integration with culture and art, and also shows Chinese's attitude towards life and life. With the improvement of cultural self-confidence, the tea lifestyle is also gradually revived. "Therefore, we hope to be able to use the deep cultural expression behind tea utensils, tea life, tea culture, and even tea culture as the entry point of the entire commercial layout, product categories and cultural activities of this building."
He also realized that in the past, the sales of tea utensils were scattered, did not form a professional retail terminal, often concentrated in the tea city, good and bad, 200 yuan and 20,000 yuan in the same market, no guarantee, no service, and no fun to play.
"What traditional culture is most afraid of is xuan and xuan, the water is very deep and untouchable." Chinese arts and crafts, not only tea utensils, the biggest bottleneck in the broad blue ocean market is trust," Shen Bin said, in Huabao Lou, he hopes to make arts and crafts products relatively standardized, in front of consumers to establish integrity, "First of all, we are all origin products; second, we prefer head enterprises; third, we do the real price, do not allow each merchant to make their own price, can not watch the price, and do enough after-sales service and protection." ”
"Product fidelity, price is not higher than the place of origin, while providing a deep interactive experience and appreciation atmosphere," Shen Bin believes that these measures can allow collectors and players to get a better experience, so as to build Huabao Lou into a terminal IP for high-end tea life aesthetics.
Entering the Huabao Building, first feel the upgrade of the display. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows replace traditional shop windows, open display cabinets change the oppressive heaviness brought by traditional Bogu shelves, log color tones, white space, creating a high-value appreciation atmosphere.
Shen Bin said that in terms of commodity display, Huabao Building borrowed from the display methods of Tsutaya Bookstore and MUJI, "making a fully open space, so that young people do not feel depressed, feel fun, easy to shop, do not have so-called cultural barriers." Secondly, our product design is divided into many levels, from hundreds, thousands, to collectors. ”
Today, the "Taoran" on the first floor of Huabao Building and the "ingenuity" on the second floor are new retail spaces that bring together well-known Tangkou and high-end buyers, and have introduced more than 25 domestic head kilns, including historical kilns such as Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding, Jun, etc., as well as representatives of the new and old first-line Tangkou in Jingdezhen: Xiaoya, JiuduanYao and Yilintang.
The "Appreciation" on the third floor is a flexible and changeable exhibition space, which is the sounding ground of the art vocabulary. In addition to the exhibition space, a normalized auction session was also set up. The first "Huabao Zhenguan - Shanghai Yuyuan Huabao Lou Jingdezhen Ceramics Special Auction", the category involves tea utensils, study room ornaments, etc., and the lots cover republic of China porcelain, 567 ceramics, Jingdezhen artist porcelain and domestic well-known ceramic Tangkou works.
The "Art Fun" space on the fourth floor, with the unique landscape of the Su-style garden, opens up a natural paradise of Yu Garden in the air, carries out high-end salon activities such as tasting, PEN meeting, artistic creation, training and learning in an immersive environment, and actively promotes the inheritance and innovation of Chinese national art and even oriental culture and art.
The 1500 square meters of negative first floor "Ya Play", follows the old city God Temple Antique Market leisure and elegant Taobao ecology, merchants mainly engaged in antiques, ceramic purple sand, jade jade, stone carving stone carving, wood carving bone carving, clock and watch stamps, etc., more than 80% of the more than 80 shops are operating for 20 or 30 years of old shops.
Continuing the tradition of Wenxing business, the manager creates a social scene
In the history of Yu Garden, there has always been a tradition of rejuvenating merchants with culture. Huabao Building inherits this tradition, and when it first opened in 1994, it held some famous calligraphy and painting exhibitions, where customers "ordered food" and calligraphers waved on the spot. In 1998, Huabao Lou launched Jingdezhen potter Lai Dequan by holding a solo exhibition of his works, and attracted the attention of collectors with the insurance project of "one arm of 100,000 yuan". Ryder's reputation in Shanghai rose to prominence, and the price of pearl-glazed porcelain, which he excelled, rose several steps. During the Spring Festival in 2007, Lai Dequan held a solo exhibition in Huabao Building, and the price of a porcelain plate painting was 80,000 yuan. It can be said that this sales method of Huabao Building has opened up a new atmosphere in the market.
This upgrade, Huabao Building has achieved the ultimate idea of "socialization".
During the opening of Huabao Building, the "Culture Week" series of activities staged an immersive collection of "ancient paintings come alive" - "Huabao Wenhui". The guests were placed in the Song Dynasty's "brocade scrolls", burning incense and hanging paintings, arranging flowers and tea, and performing artists on the spot, and improvising ink and thin gold bodies. The maids "thin vermilion, face through the red", completely restored the Song Dynasty Su Hanchen's "makeup beautiful female figure" in the "three white makeup".
Each hall will also carry out frequent activities, inviting the manager to meet with the player collector, answer questions, and display his handicrafts, such as the pastel hand-painting activity of Chengde Xuan and the live lecture of Li Yong Zisha.
This is also the first time that Huabao Building has adopted the principal system, in Shen Bin's view, the participation of the principals of each hall makes the sales process no longer a dialogue between people and things, but an exchange between people and people, "establishing trust between people and explaining its value composition from a professional perspective." ”
The Iron Painting Xuan on the third floor of Huabao Building was originally a purple sand business name established in the second year of the Republic of China (1913), famous for the exquisite purple sand pottery carving skills of the founder Dai Guobao, and its name was taken from the "iron painting silver hook" of pottery carving art. The "Iron Painting Xuan Tea Pavilion" was reopened in Huabao Building this time, and Rong Xinyu, who is known as the "first person in the tea talk show", was invited to serve as the manager, creating a unique space for tea culture lovers to meet friends.
"The so-called manager may be a space, or the head of a brand, the combination of culture and business, calling the boss too commercial, calling the teacher may not be enough, the manager, the right person." Rong Xinyu sat at the entrance of his own hall, talking about it, pouring a cup of tea for each guest.
"It's like when you walk into Starbucks and you only ask you if you want a big cup or a middle cup, you don't ask if you understand coffee." In Rong Xinyu's view, the manager is like such a guide, he claims to be "the tea world to see the door", believes that the spread of culture to lower the threshold, "I do not deny milk tea, I think milk tea is also made of people in our industry." I think the expression of tea is also diverse. Coffee can pull flowers, tea can still, in the Song Dynasty, we called tea hundred plays, also called water Danqing, only with water and tea powder can be made. ”
In order to meet everyone's pursuit of oriental aesthetics, Huabao Building will also launch a series of art and humanities courses in the form of salons, art sets, competitions, etc., such as "Ceramic Appreciation Salon", "Incense Culture Salon", "Book French Painting Salon", "Rubbing Salon", "Wuhua Tianbao Collection Elegant Appreciation Salon", "Tea Ceremony Elegant Collection", "Oriental Flower Arrangement Collection", "Golden Silk, Ju Porcelain, Lacquer Art Collection", "Daffodil Carving Collection", "Go Competition", etc. In addition, Huabao Building will also launch the "Huabao Beauty Products , Weekly Products" column on the new media platform, and carry out live broadcasting and other services at the same time.
A few days ago, the "Qinglan Chinese Contemporary Qinghua Academic Invitation Exhibition" is being held in the art space on the third floor of Huabao Building in Yuyuan Mall, connecting the two cities of Shanghai and Jingdezhen with porcelain as an artistic vocabulary. The exhibition brings together 21 artists, including Yu Xiaofu, Li Jin, Wang Xiangyang, Leng Jun, Fang Lijun, Luo Xiaocong, Qiu Zhijie, etc., spanning different art fields such as oil painting, Chinese painting, sculpture, and installation.
Curator Luo Xiaocong introduced: "Jingdezhen's blue and white porcelain has a great influence on the world, but in the past thousand years of inheritance, an old-fashioned practice, pattern or decoration has been formed, and the artistic language lacks independence. This exhibition should promote the use of artistic vision to look at qinghua, experimentally explore its future path, give this ancient great pearl a new life, new concepts, new artistic language, and adapt to the development of contemporary art. ”
It is reported that this exhibition is the first exhibition of Huabao Lou's "Tale of Two Cities" series, after which, Huabao Lou will also conduct in-depth exchanges with Yixing, Dongyang, Longquan and other arts and crafts towns. Give the public the opportunity to enjoy treasures from the origin of arts and crafts.