Chongbai Dreamery Officially Opens: Legacy DepartmentStore Transforms into ACG Complex, Boosting Local-Business and Domestic-Animation Influence

On July 22 2026, Chongbai Dreamery, China’s first comprehensive ACG complex centred on Chinese manhua content, event operations and user experience, officially opened in Chongqing’s Guanyinqiao business district. Renovated from the former Jiangbei Department Store of Chongbai, the site boasts a total construction area of 20 000 sq.m with 11 000 sq.m of operational space. Moving away from conventional departmentstore logic focused purely on goods sales, over 55 % of usable space is allocated for publicexperience scenarios including IP premier zones, esports arenas, otakudance stages and photo zones. Targeting realworld painpoints for ACG enthusiasts, it provides complimentary changing rooms, makeup stations, dancepractice areas and lockers as dedicated user amenities, forming an offline gathering hub for panACG fans. More than thirty ACGoriented brands have movedin, including the world’sfirst GoodSmile Moment store and the first Chongqing outlet of animate cafe, covering figure retail, themed catering and IP popup events央广网重庆….

Impacts on Local Business-district and Regional Economy

Guanyinqiao ranks among Southwest China’s premier international commercial districts, generating annual sales exceeding RMB 370 billion with average daily footfall above 600 000 visitors CCTV Chongqing…. Chongbai Dreamery injects substantial GenZ consumption increments into this mature district and delivers tangible economic spill-over effects. Within its launch month, the venue drew over 1.3 million visitors with sales nearing RMB 10 million. Large numbers of young outoftown visitors travel specifically for the complex, stimulating nearby catering, hospitality and culturaltourism consumption and further strengthening Guanyinqiao’s passengertraffic magnetism Chongqing NewsNetwork.

The project serves as a notable case-study for revitalising legacy retail real-estate. An underperforming older department-store building has been reimagined as a culture-driven experiential commercial destination, unlocking urban stock property value. Departing from traditional rentcollection models, it drives footfall through cultural events before realising commercial conversion. It enriches Chongqing’s “first-store economy” portfolio and supports the city’s ambition to become an international consumption hub. Beyond onsite revenue, recurring IP pop-ups, esports tournaments and creator meetups foster local upstreamanddownstream growth for event-planning, IPlicensing and culturalcreative merchandise sectors, opening fresh growth drivers for urban culturalentertainment consumption.

Industry Influence on China’s Domestic ACG Community

Against a backdrop where China’s pan-ACG user-base has surpassed 500 million, Chongbai Dreamery goes beyond ordinary ACGthemed malls focused merely on merchandise sales. It brings convention-style activities permanently indoors, creating a year-round offline home for ACG sub-culture Chongqing Business Newspaper. Previously, Chinese ACG fans frequently struggled to secure suitable venues and supporting services for offline gatherings. By providing spacious public zones and specialised amenities, the complex fills critical gaps in offline community infrastructure, delivering stable physical space for cosplayers, doujin creators and otakudance performers.

It connects online ACG communities with physical real-world venues. By partnering with major domestic convention organisers and ACG social platforms, it forms a complete loop: online content exposure, on-site participation and commercial conversion. It delivers a regular physical stage for Chinese-manhua IP premieres, exhibitions and popups, helping home-grown animation culture expand from niche online circles toward massmarket audiences. The arrival of numerous domestic and international flagship ACG stores fills gaps in Southwest-China’s local ACG retail landscape, easing the historic concentration of premium ACG resources in firsttier cities and energising the whole regional ACG industry. The operator plans to rollout 510 similar complexes nationwide over the next 35 years. Its proven “Chinesemanhua + events + userexperience” framework offers a replicable blueprint for physical ACGoriented commerce across China.

Industry Outlook

Chongbai Dreamery illustrates a clear trend within youth consumption: modernday consumers increasingly value community belonging, social engagement and emotional experience over simple product procurement. Integrating cultural content as a commercial core and combining legacy retail space with youth subculture not only revitalises brick-and-mortar business, but also opens new offline commercial pathways for Chinesemanhua IP, supplying fresh ideas for the integration of urban culture, tourism and commerce.