bought it
Chinese designer bags
The category that started it. Design you cannot buy outside China, at a price that is not silly.
Packing Cabin safe. Keep the dust bag.
The trend · the list · the paperwork
The China Haul
Arrive with an empty case, leave with three. What is actually being bought in Shanghai, the streets it happens on, and the paperwork that decides whether you see your tax again.
+366% yoy (H1 2026)
Refund claims filed
35.2m in 2025, +30.5%
Inbound visitors
~14,000 nationwide
Tax-refund shops
¥200 per store, per day
Minimum spend
Figures are nationwide and drawn from official sources, not Shanghai alone. Shop counts and thresholds move — confirm the current ones at the counter.
What is actually going on
Foreign visitors have started calling it "China Haul": come to China with empty luggage, buy things you cannot get at home, film the unpacking. It went mainstream abroad in 2025 and has not stopped since.
Shanghai is where it happens most visibly, because Shanghai is where the Chinese designer brands are. The interesting part is not the videos — it is that the mechanics behind them are entirely learnable: what to buy, how the refund works, and how to get it home.
Where it happens
Three haul streets
Almost all of the trend happens on three stretches. Each one is a different kind of shopping, and each is reachable by metro from the centre.
Chinese designer brands
Huaihai Middle Road
The street that made this trend. Two kilometres of Chinese designer labels, one after another, with fixed prices and staff who are used to foreign customers.
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01
Songmont 山下有松
No. 817–821
Minimal, quiet, unmistakably Chinese in its materials and proportions. The bag brand most foreign visitors now arrive already knowing.
Bags are the reason people come. Ask what is actually in stock — popular colours sell out and are not restocked on any schedule.
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02
PANE
No. 523, L1
The sneaker name that broke out of China first: German-army-trainer silhouettes and casual clothing, at prices that make the quality hard to justify at home.
Sizing runs Chinese. Try on — do not buy your usual European or US size blind.
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03
MASON PRINCE
No. 530
Street and vintage styling with real design behind it. This is the one that videos about "China Haul" keep cutting to.
Pieces are cut small. If you are between sizes, take the larger one.
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04
Macha Wang 玛尚王
No. 550, HAI550, 1F-02
Tea-led fragrance. Light, dry, green — the opposite of the sweet-heavy Western high-street scent, and the reason people buy a full set.
Perfume is the easiest thing in the world to overpack and the easiest to lose to a baggage handler. Box it.
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05
cubic · cliche · 乙颂
Same stretch, both sides of the road
Smaller labels covering jewellery, accessories and clothing. This is where the "one of everything" behaviour starts.
Walk the whole block first, then double back. Prices are fixed, so the only thing you lose by waiting is the queue.
Do not come here for a bargain. You are paying for design you cannot buy at home, not for a discount — the same factory labels cost roughly the same here as they do in a Chinese online store.
Old names, new toys
Nanjing East Road
A hundred-year-old shopping street that now also carries the flagship stores of China’s designer-toy industry. Two completely different shopping trips on one pedestrian street.
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01
The old names
West end, towards People’s Square
Shanghai’s century-old food, fabric and medicine houses. Tea, pastries, silk, and the kind of packaging that survives a long-haul flight.
These shops have fixed prices and will weigh, wrap and seal things for travel. Ask for 送礼 (gift) packing.
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02
Designer toy flagships
Mid-street, multi-floor
Blind boxes, figures and art toys — several global flagships sit within a few hundred metres of each other. This is the category that has grown fastest with foreign visitors.
Blind boxes are gambling. If you want a specific figure, ask staff for the display model — most shops sell the confirmed one.
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03
Souvenirs that are not junk
Side streets off the main pedestrian road
Chinese-designed stationery, small home goods and gifts. Cheap, light, and genuinely difficult to find outside China.
Walk one block off Nanjing Road and prices drop noticeably. The main street pays for its rent.
This street also has the city’s densest concentration of tourist approaches — tea-ceremony invitations, "art student" galleries, pedicabs with flexible pricing. Nobody approaches you here to be friendly. See the shopping warnings before you go.
Made to measure
The South Bund
The insider answer to "what should I actually buy": cloth chosen by you, a pattern cut to you, and a garment that exists nowhere else.
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01
The fabric floors
South Bund fabric market area
Floor after floor of silk, wool, linen and cashmere, with tailors on the upper levels. You pick the cloth, they cut one pattern for one person.
Bring a photograph of what you want and a garment that already fits you. Both help more than any amount of describing.
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02
Qipao and suits
Tailors on the upper floors
A qipao or a suit made to your measurements, usually in two to five days with one fitting in between. The single most frequently filmed purchase in the whole trend.
Insist on one fitting before you pay in full. A made-to-measure garment with no fitting is just a guess.
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03
The shipping desk
Most floors have one
Almost every floor will pack and post your finished clothes home for you, which solves the entire luggage problem.
Get the tracking number and a written note of what is in the parcel before you leave the floor.
Prices here are negotiated, and the first number you hear is not the number. Compare three stalls, decide what you would happily pay, and be ready to walk — the walking-away part is the whole technique.
The list
What people are actually buying
Twelve things that come up again and again, with the one-line reason each is worth carrying home. Vote for the ones you bought.
Filter
bought it
Chinese sneakers
Real leather, real construction, and a price that makes the same specification look absurd at home.
Packing Bulky. Wear the heaviest pair onto the plane.
bought it
Streetwear and vintage cuts
The most photographed category in the trend, and the one where sizing will catch you out.
Packing Cabin safe. Size up.
bought it
Tea-led fragrance
Green, dry and quiet — a genuinely different scent profile from anything on a Western high street.
Packing Fragile. Box it, do not wrap it.
bought it
AI glasses and wearables
Live translation in a pair of glasses. The single item most likely to be unavailable at home when you read about it here.
Packing Cabin only. Batteries do not go in the hold.
bought it
Drones, gimbals and mics
Consumer drones and creator hardware at local-market prices, because the supply chain is here.
Packing Check airline battery rules before you buy, not after.
bought it
Folding phones
The model that made "Future" the word foreign reviewers keep using. Check the band support for your home network first.
Packing Cabin only. Declare it at customs if your country asks.
bought it
Designer toys and blind boxes
Flagship stores within a few hundred metres of each other, and a design scene that has been mature for years.
Packing Boxes are large and crushable. Ship them.
bought it
Chinese herbal and wellness
Herbal syrups, moxa patches, foot-soak packets. The surprise entry on nearly every haul video.
Packing Check what your country allows in. Some herbal products do not travel legally.
bought it
Chinese tea
Still the best purchase in Shanghai. The quality gap is real and the price gap at home is enormous.
Packing Cabin safe, smells strongly. Seal it.
bought it
Made-to-measure tailoring
Cloth you chose, a pattern cut for you, and one fitting. Nothing else in the haul is actually unique.
Packing Ship it. Most floors will post it for you.
bought it
Stationery and paper
Chinese stationery design is strong, cheap and light. The best souvenir per gram in the city.
Packing Cabin safe. The easiest thing on this list to fly home with.
The order is editorial judgement, not votes. Counts start at zero — nothing on this list is pre-filled with a number.
Suitcase maths
What fits in your case
Put in a rough budget and a case size. This will not be exact — it will stop you buying a third suitcase at the airport.
20Fits in your case
About 20 items in a 24" check-in
12Your budget buys
About 12 items at mixed prices
40 · 25 · 20 · 15Where the money goes
¥1,600 fashion · ¥1,000 tech · ¥800 tea & gifts · ¥600 made to measure
¥360Tax back
Around ¥¥360 at ~9%, if every shop is registered
Estimates only. The refund figure assumes every shop is registered for refunds and that you complete the departure formalities.
Play along
The haul bingo card
Nine things that happen to almost everybody. Tick them off as they happen — the card lives in your browser and goes nowhere.
0/ 9
Nothing ticked yet. Start shopping.
Nothing is uploaded. Ticks are stored in your browser and disappear when you clear them.
From readers
Hauls people have sent in
Real lists, real streets, and the one thing each person wishes they had known first.
Nothing here yet. The list above is ours — this wall is yours.
Add yours
Submit your haul
Bought something in Shanghai that belongs on this list? Tell us what, where, and what you would do differently.
Everything is read by an editor before it appears on this page. We do not publish contact details, and we do not publish anything we cannot confirm is a real purchase.
Go deeper
The four things worth reading
The list is the short version. These are the parts people come back and check a second time.
01
The China Haul shopping list, category by category
Twelve things that fly well and one long list that does not. What each costs in shelf terms, where it actually is, and what goes wrong with it.
Before you leave the hotel→
02
Tax refunds for foreign visitors, plainly
How the departure tax refund works in 2026: the ¥200 threshold, refund-at-purchase, the 28-day window, and the three documents that decide whether you get anything.
Before your first big purchase→
03
How to get all of it home
Airline allowances, shipping a box instead of checking one, the hotel-parcel trick, and the customs side nobody puts in the videos.
Two days before you fly→
04
The Huaihai Road haul walk
Two kilometres of Chinese designer labels, walked east from South Shaanxi Road, with the metro exit, the order that avoids backtracking, and where to stop for food.
Weekday afternoon, or Sunday before noon→
FAQ
China Haul, answered
Everything on this site is written and re-checked on the ground. When something changes, this page changes.
Is shopping in Shanghai actually cheap any more?
Less than people expect. You are buying things you cannot get at home, not discounts — the same Chinese brands cost roughly the same here as on Chinese online stores. The exception is made-to-measure clothing, which is genuinely cheap for what it is.
Do I really need to arrive with an empty suitcase?
It is a tactic, not a rule. It helps if you intend to buy clothing or shoes, which are bulky. It is unnecessary if you are buying tea, stationery and fragrance, which weigh almost nothing.
What is the single best thing to buy?
Chinese tea, still. The quality gap is real and the price at home is several times higher — and unlike most of this list, it is impossible to get wrong if you buy from a fixed-price shop and taste it first.
Can I actually get the VAT back?
Yes, at registered shops, above the minimum spend, with your passport at the counter. The rate is up to 11% less a handling fee, so around 9% in practice. See the tax refund guide — the paperwork happens at the till, not at the airport.
Is this just a social media trend?
The name is. The behaviour is not: the refund scheme was expanded twice in two years, shop counts have quadrupled, and the number of visitors claiming refunds rose sharply. The filming is new; the shopping is not.
I have one afternoon. Where do I start?
South Shaanxi Road on the metro, then walk east along Huaihai Middle Road for five hundred metres. That is the highest density of the labels people come for, in the shortest distance.
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