CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- “We were terribly busy yesterday, selling more than 1,000 bowls of noodles,” Mr. Li said excitedly while cooking noodles in his store, Li’s Xiaomian Noodles, in Jiefangbei on April 6. His store was filled to capacity at noon, with customers sitting in a long queue outside the store. Some of the customers were tourists who came with suitcases.

This Qingming holiday, some small and characteristic specialty stores become popular in holiday consumption, such as small noodles restaurants, cultural and creative stores, night market stalls, etc.

Cultural and creative stores with Chongqing characteristics started a shopping craze

On April 5, a customer shared with us what she bought in ‘Dong Er Xi’ cultural and creative store in TESTBED2: Hand-drawn maps for Chongqing good food, cityscape postcards, hot pot refrigerator stickers, the Yangtze River Cableway keychains... “These items are small and practical, full of the cultural characteristics of Chongqing. I want to share them with my friends and family,” said the customer.

The daily passenger traffic in the ‘Dong Er Xi’ cultural and creative store exceeded 10,000 during the Qingming Festival holiday, and the cultural and creative products favored by out-of-town visitors mainly included refrigerator stickers, postcards, small badges, and shopping bags with Chongqing’s characteristics.

TESTBED2 is not the only tourist attraction that is popular for cultural and creative products. Cultural and creative shops with Chongqing characteristics have made several scenic spots a must-visit place in Chongqing.

As a tourism mecca in Chongqing, Liziba Station has attracted continuous streams of visitors and started a craze for relevant cultural and creative products.

The miniature versions of the Chongqing Rail Transit trains, train model building blocks, and refrigerator stickers in the shapes of monorail trains, subway trains, and rail tracks, exhibited in the Liziba Cultural and Creative Hall, have been popular among tourists.

Eateries offered seasonal food, such as sweet green rice balls

The staff members of the ‘Sha Zi Xiang Xiang’ tangyuan store in Mountain City Alley, Yuzhong District, were terribly busy on the morning of April 6. Gong Yilin, the shop owner, told us they received many customers during the Qingming Festival holidays as many tourists visited Shancheng Lane.

To satisfy the demands of the growing number of visitors during the holiday, Gong Yilin prepared the filling of glutinous rice balls, glutinous rice flour, and other raw materials three times as much as usual. During the Qingming Festival, the store offered seasonal food such as sweet green rice balls (Qingtuan), a popular Qingming Festival food made of a mixture of glutinous rice flour and Chinese mugwort juice. The jade-green balls looked appetizing and attracted many customers.

In addition to sweet green rice balls with different tastes, Qingtuan Tofu Pudding, Qingtuan Cake, Qingtuan Bubble Tea, and many other spring-time-limited foods were available in various food stores. Some of the stores even offered Qingtuan-making activities, which were well received by tourists.

The turnover of many night market vendors nearly doubled

The night market, full of local specialties, is also a must-visit for foodies during the Qingming Festival holiday.

Many stall owners had prepared their ingredients for food before 5 p.m. on April 6 in Minxin Jiayuan Night Market in Liangjiang New Area.

"We received many more customers than usual these days. We arrived at the stall at 16:00 today." Zhang Xiaoyan, the owner of ‘Haoyouai Grilled-Fresh-Squid’, told us that on the first day of the holiday, they sold hundreds of grilled squid skewers, with a turnover of about CNY2,500, double the usual amount.

It’s getting dark at 19:00. The calls of vendors and the cooking oil smoke brought Minxin Jiayuan Night Market to life at night.

Yang Shuai, the owner of ‘Brother Nan’s Flaming Beef’, kept brushing oil on the iron plate in the stall. Wow! A flame rose from the iron plate, attracting a crowd of onlookers. “Normally we earn up to CNY3,000 per day, and the sales reached about CNY5,500 on the first day of the Qingming Festival holiday.” It was easy to achieve a turnover of more than CNY10,000 this Qingming holiday.

Different from the conventional business districts, small and characterful stores were attracting tourists in and out of Chongqing with creative consumption mode, accurate target positioning, and subdivided consumption scenarios during the holiday. The small-store economy is growing vigorously. (Translated by Yuki, Fathom Language Limited)