This book explores the history of department stores from a cultural perspective, examining how this new type of enterprise helped reshape the urban landscape of Republican-era Shanghai. What distinguished department stores from conventional retailers was their scale: these magnificent emporiums occupied entire blocks, while their wide variety of merchandise proved sufficient to meet the needs of human life. The purpose of these business innovations clearly involved encouraging consumption and maximizing profits by selling more and faster. Moreover, by so doing department stores disseminated the concept of consumerism, which allows us to decipher various types of ideological tensions in the urban society. For instance, department stores initially boasted of being “universal providers” that carried goods from the world, but were accused of being “treacherous” for the same reason at the peak of the National Products Movement of the 1920s and 30s. Similar controversies took place in the realms of class and gender. First established to cater to elite tastes, department stores gradually extended their influence to less wealthy people and became more inclusive. At the same time, while these stores presented themselves as female dreamlands in both consumption and employment, women were at times portrayed as victims of consumer culture. By considering these and other issues, this study sheds new light on the complexity of urban consumer culture in modern China.