SHANGHAI — As shoppers step into the bustling wet market on downtown Luban Road, they are now greeted by a vast LED screen displaying the fresh produce on sale and the day’s prices.

It’s the most visible sign of the back-to-the-future campaign taking place across Shanghai, as the city of 25 million tries to reinvent traditional wet markets for the 2020s.

For decades, wet markets have been a riotous hub of community life in China’s major cities. The markets bring together dozens of stalls selling fresh meat, vegetables, and seafood, often jammed together in cramped, noisy spaces.

Today, there are hundreds of wet markets all over Shanghai, and they have proved remarkably resilient. Though they’re hardly relaxing places to shop, they offer customers access to fresh, cheap produce within a few minutes’ walk of their homes.

But the city is now giving the markets a much-needed upgrade, aiming not only to improve hygiene and food safety standards but also to help them attract younger customers who have increasingly been switching to online grocery platforms.

Luban Road is one of the latest targets of this campaign. The market underwent renovation works in May.

The market is divided into three separate zones: vegetables on the left, meat on the right, and seafood at the back. Air conditioning has been installed to keep the place cool even amid the current punishing heat wave. Around the sides are new stores selling popular local dishes, such as braised fish and scallion pancakes. The whole place feels cleaner, quieter, more orderly.

Then, there is the new tech. In addition to the huge screens, there are now artificial intelligence-powered smart scales prominently placed at the front of each stall. Rather than haggling with vendors over prices, customers now simply place their produce on the scales, and the machines identify the items, weigh them, and price them automatically.

Luban Road is one of 60 wet markets to undergo renovation so far this year. Shanghai aims to complete work on another 20 by the end of 2024.

Inside, vendors praise the new smart scales, saying that they are more efficient and can handle double the weight capacity of old digital scales. There are also a few younger customers, who say they used to shop for groceries online but have now returned to using wet markets as a result of the renovation campaign.

“The fruits and vegetables here are not only fresher; I can also handle them, which gives me a feeling of reconnecting with nature,” Chen Yuqi, a 35-year-old who moved to the area a few months ago, tells Sixth Tone. “Now, with smart devices, there’s no need to calculate the bill myself, making the entire shopping experience more convenient and relaxing.”

But not everything is perfect. At wet markets on Madang Road and West Mengzi Road, vendors said they had noticed a decrease in foot traffic since the renovations. Regular customers were forced to shop elsewhere while the markets were shut down, and many have never returned.

“A lot of our previous customers haven’t come back,” said one vendor, surnamed Wang.

The segregation of markets by produce type has also had drawbacks for vendors. In the past, customers would often browse the stalls at random, picking up extra items as they went. Now, they can simply head straight to the stalls selling the produce they most need.

“That’s led to a decrease in incidental foot traffic that used to occur as a result of cross-sectional browsing,” said one vegetable vendor surnamed Huang at the West Mengzi Road market.

However, it may be that the renovations are necessary to help wet markets remain competitive in the long run. Online platforms offering fresh groceries at rock-bottom prices have grown explosively in China over recent years, putting wet markets under pressure, according to Zhang Hai’ao, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of Design.

“Currently, wet markets mainly rely on repeat purchases by older customers and attracting new younger customers,” said Zhang. “That’s a complicated thing to do, which cannot be achieved solely through design.”

Renovated markets at least offer customers more convenience by making it easier for buyers to find the items they’re looking for, Zhang added, describing how wet markets used to be chaotic and unhygienic places where vendors often employed cutthroat methods to stay competitive.

Wet markets are also introducing a range of other measures to stay competitive. Customers can now pay using digital payment apps and have food delivered to their homes. Some markets have also tried to appeal to younger consumers by introducing stalls selling items like coffee and flowers at affordable prices.

In 2021, one market in central Shanghai even partnered with the fashion brand Prada by displaying the Italian label’s logo on its vegetable stalls. The campaign brought massive crowds — and hordes of influencers — to the market, though it’s unclear how many of them became regular customers after the campaign ended.

Additional reporting: Li Yanshu and Dong Ziqing.

(Header image:  The wet market on Madang Road, Shanghai, July 2024. Li Yanshu for Sixth Tone)