Author: Elegant Beard (Wu Yonggang-Max)
On September 28, 2021, The New Mart Shopping and Leisure Plaza (hereinafter referred to as New Mart), a large commercial group located opposite Century Square in Jilin City, posted an announcement: After eight years of operation, New Mart decided to terminate its business on October 31. As New Mart has long become one of the important landmarks in the Gangnam area, the release of this announcement has deeply touched the general public, especially those living around New Mart.
When it comes to the location of the new Mart, since the late Qing Dynasty, it has been the most prosperous area of commerce in the Jiangnan area of Jilin City. At that time, it was close to the "Xijiaji Street Ferry", and the endless flow of passengers stopped here, forming a market with small-scale commerce, catering and hotel industry, commonly known as "small market". Since the completion of the Jilin Bridge, the south side of the bridge has become the throat connecting the main urban area and the Jiangnan area, and the "Jiangnan development" has been intensively carried out, allowing the small market to occupy the commanding heights of regional commerce.
In aerial views from the 1970s and 1980s, there were still large areas of farmland in the Gangnam area
In the 1950s, the seven major projects of the first five-year plan settled in Jilin City, thanks to the continuous influx of funds and personnel, the business of Jilin City also entered a period of rapid development. In that year, considering that more and more enterprises and institutions moved into the Jiangnan area, Jilin City Department Store decided to lay out a department store in the Jiangnan area. In 1959, at the intersection of Jiangnan Avenue (now Jilin Avenue) and Huashan Road, a Soviet-style three-story building was completed and put into use, which became the state-run Seventh Department Store.
The old shadow of the seven shops in the early days of construction
From the beginning of its construction, Seven Shops was already the largest department store in the Gangnam area. It not only served the troops, schools, enterprises and institutions and urban residents in the Jiangnan area, because most of the areas in Jiangnan at that time were suburban vegetable cooperatives, and the seven shops also reduced the dimension to a certain extent to hit a few small supply and marketing cooperatives and a large number of rural markets, becoming a frequent place for farmers in the Jiangnan area. However, decades ago, the Jiangnan area was sparsely populated, and when examined citywide, the benefits of the seven shops of the "regional gangster" were really difficult to call "strong".
Seven shop old shadows
Salesman in the warm reception of customers, taken from the "Jilin Business Collection"
Fortunately, in the era of planned economy, there is a "unified purchase and unified sales, ticket supply" model for the seven stores to escort, such as bicycles, radios and many other tight commodity sales indicators were distributed to the seven stores, attracting customers outside the Jiangnan region flocked to, coupled with a relatively complete range of daily necessities, but also make the seven stores to maintain a thriving in the region, daily operation is not cold. Especially in the mid-to-late 1980s, commercial enterprises first tasted the sweetness of reform and opening up, and the seven stores also ushered in a booming business event. In the promotional materials reported by the store, it is not without emotion: "The store has moved from poverty to prosperity, and the sales of one million yuan from the beginning of the establishment of the store have exceeded the mark of ten million yuan... From 5,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan per capita. In 1987, it was rated as an advanced unit of quality service by the Provincial Department of Commerce...... In 1989, it was rated as an advanced enterprise in Jilin City" ("Jilin Business Collection").
With the deepening of China's reform and development, under the impact of the market economy, since the 1990s, the operation of the seven stores has deteriorated. Even after the restructuring into the "Jiangnan Commercial Building", although the commercial buildings have improved their decoration and upgraded their hardware conditions, the seven shops that have lost the escort of the planned economy have encountered the attack of traditional large-scale commercial enterprises and private commercial enterprises in Jilin City, and are subject to factors such as the limited number of population, enterprises and institutions, and the business situation has not fundamentally improved.
At the beginning of the new century, the image of part of the building on the south side of Hualian Jimaisheng Supermarket was not in The Zhonghai Community at that time
At the beginning of the new century, stimulated by the unusually hot Hengkelong supermarket, the commercial field of Jilin City began a round of supermarket construction competition, and several huge supermarkets were completed in Jilin City. Similar to the fate of the six stores, the road of Jiangnan Commercial Building's transformation into a large supermarket has not gone far. Whether it is the spring of the north country or Hualian Jimaisheng, although the shopping mall has been converted into the largest supermarket in the Jiangnan area, it is a pity that in the fierce supermarket competition in Jilin City, it is not the final winner. Many factors resonate, and after several years of operation, the two supermarkets have chosen to withdraw. After several years of idle business buildings, in 2010, the dilapidated building was demolished and a high-rise commercial and residential building was built on the original site.
In March 2012, New Mart signed a contract to enter the modern shopping mall format and officially opened on January 25 of the following year. New Mart once had a certain degree of popularity, especially the supermarket and the top floor food city were once quite popular. In recent years, perhaps affected by online shopping, the epidemic and other factors, or the homogenization of surrounding commercial enterprises "inner volume", New Mart has shown operational fatigue. In retrospect, the announcement of the termination of business seems to have been foreshadowed.
Thinking back to that year, when New Mart entered the Jiangnan area of Jilin City, it had been placed by Jilin City with high hopes of "building a Jiangnan business circle", but unfortunately, the situation was changing, and in just eight years, as the largest shopping center in the Jiangnan area of Jilin City, New Mart actually left the market in a dismal way. After four changes of seven stores, Jiangnan Commercial Building, Beiguo Spring, Hualian Jimaisheng and New Mart, I don't know who will shoulder the heavy responsibility of the leader of the business circle in Jiangnan Qiaotou, Jilin City in the future.
The subjective reasons for the termination of the business of New Mart are summarized by the mall operators themselves; the objective reasons are also indispensable to the analysis and interpretation of the theorists. As an ordinary citizen, I can only use the five-flavored and miscellaneous words to silently leave this special urban memory...
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