Xujiahui, also known in English as Ziccawei, is an area in the Xuhui District of Shanghai, China and the name of a metro station in this area.
Xujiahui literally means "Xu's junction" - or, more precisely, "property of Xu family at the junction of two rivers" in Mandarin. The "Xu family" actually refers to the family of Xu Guangqi (1562-1633), China's most notable Catholic convert. Most of what is now present day Xujiahui was once the ancestral home of Xu Guangqi and his family. Baptized by famed Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, Xu Guangqi and his descendants donated large plots of land to the Catholic Church, including the site of the St. Ignatius Cathedral.
Pronounced in the old Shanghainese dialect of Wu Chinese, it is called "zi-ga-wei". During the 18th century it was known by Shanghai's western residents as "Ziccawei," and is still listed in a number of contemporary guidebooks and literature as "Zikawei" or some variant thereof.
During the late 1990s, many of the state-owned factories were sold off and torn down. Xujiahui is now mainly a commercial district of downtown Shanghai. On the location of a former brick factory now stands the Xujiahui park, which was completed in 2002. The park also contains a man-made pond and meandering brook, basketball courts, and a children's playground. The Shanghai Conservatory of Music - located to the park - often stages free performances during the Spring and Autumn months in the park, as these are the times when weather in Shanghai is the best.
The main Xujiahui shopping district is centered around the intersection of the streets Hongqiao Rd, Huashan Rd, Zhaojiabang Rd and North Caoxi Rd. Each of these streets terminates at the intersection, which is home to three supermarkets, six major shopping malls and nine large-scale office towers. Everything from cosmetics to cars to cucumbers is available within five minutes, but the type of product that Xujiahui is most famous for is electronics. It is one of the biggest places for people to get electronic equipment, from cameras to PSPs to XBoxes and modchips for those XBoxes and other game consoles as well.
A five minute walk to the north of this intersection is the famous Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Xujiahui was part of the former "French Concession" of Shanghai.
