THE glory of Shanghai as a shopping mecca can be traced back to the time of its top four stores - Wing On, The Sincere, The Sun and Sun Sun.

The first of four stores established on Nanjing Lu was The Sincere Department Store, now the Shanghai Fashion Store.

Sun Yat-sen encouraged Ma Yingbiao, a Chinese in Australia, to invest in China, offering him preferential policies.

The Sincere Store opened to customers on October 20, 1917.

The following year, Wing On, now Hualian Department Store, opened just opposite The Sincere store.

The Wing On store in Shanghai was an enterprise run by the Wing On Group of the Guo family.

Guo Lesheng, founder of the Wing On Company, was born in Xiangshan County of Guangdong Province, Sun Yat-sen's native home.

At 17, Guo went to Australia to seek his livelihood by working as a fruit wholesaler in Sydney. Not long afterwards, he had acquired a fortune.

Shortly after establishing the Wing On Department Store in Hong Kong, Guo Lesheng turned his attention to Shanghai, where he sent his brothers Guo Quan and Guo Gui to lay the groundwork for the store.

With the completion of the building, the Guo brothers took great pains with the display of merchandise in the four-storey store.

On the ground floor were departments selling every day articles such as cosmetics, cigarettes and food.

Departments on the first floor offered woolen goods, silks and satins and garments for sale.

The second floor was set aside for jewellery, watches and clocks, and musical instruments, while the third floor sold furniture, leather suitcases and bicycles.

As the two huge floors handled middle and high-grade goods, most of the store's customers already had specific products in mind to buy.

Wing On's initial layout was later adopted by The Sincere and is still used by many department stores in the city.

Opened in 1925, Sun Sun had its own strategy to compete with the well-established giants.

A radio in the store broadcast popular programmes that attracted many curious people and thus boosted business. The building's current occupant is the Shanghai First Provisions Store.

Though The Sun, now the Shanghai No. 1 Department Store, was the last of the four - opening in Nanjing Lu on January 10 of 1936 - it also had its own unique gimmicks to gain consumers' attention.

It is the first store in Shanghai to use escalators. Escalators were exciting to knowledgable Shanghaiese and riding the moving stairs was considered by many as great fun.

"Going to The Sun to take the escalator" became the pet phrase of fashionable people of that time. Zou Huilin