Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: New Century Global Center

  • Chengdu – New Century Global Center

    Chengdu – New Century Global Center

    When I was in Chengdu, back in 2014, I thought it would a good idea to get the Metro to go and see what was the largest building in the world in terms of floor space.

    This was my view when I got off the Metro, a building so big that it was almost impossible to photograph it in one go. I’ve never seen anything so substantial before, a crazy piece of commercialism.

    It’s a sprawling building, with 18 million square feet of floor space.

    chengdufromfront.jpg

    This is the mall’s official photo, they probably had to go back about half a mile to take this and get the whole building in.

    Some photos of the interior, which I remember wasn’t all finished when I went. It also wasn’t particularly busy and many shops weren’t let. There are two 1,000 room hotels at the shopping mall, as well as a water park, ice-skating rink and cinema. But, although it may have felt just a bit too big, it was nonetheless still quite marvellous to see the largest shopping mall in the world and I did enjoy my Subway experience here.

  • Chengdu – New Century Global Center (Subway)

    Chengdu – New Century Global Center (Subway)

    And going back to 2014 now. The New Century Global Center is one of the largest buildings in the world and I visited it around one year after it was constructed. More on this in another post….

    And this was the first time that I tried to order a Subway in China. I find the ordering process difficult enough in English if I’m being honest, but I bravely decided that I could get away with pointing. So, I go in and there was a friendly member of staff who spoke hardly any English, but she excitedly got on the phone to tell them about my arrival. A manager appeared from nowhere about thirty seconds later and she spoke nearly perfect English, she was thrilled as I was the first English speaking customer she’d served in months and she wanted to practice the language. At the time, and indeed probably now, Chengdu city centre doesn’t attract huge numbers of English visitors.

    I don’t go to Subway much, primarily as I’m moderately obsessed with Quiznos, although I don’t get to visit there very often. But, this was one of the better Subways that I’ve visited and the menu at the time was near identical to the US menu (unlike when I visited a Subway India, which is more of a different set-up) and the food tasted fine. I didn’t really take photos in the same way back then, although at least I have a picture of my American looking Sub, which is also in American looking branding of subway.com that I don’t think I thought about at the time. I say that it was the first time that I ordered a Subway in China, it was also the last, I never got round to going to another one after this.