Quan Er 荃二
Add: 1, Alley 764 Changle Lu, near Fumin Lu / 长乐路764弄1号, 近富民路
Tel: 18621651927
Hours: [Mon-Fri] 8-10pm [Sat-Sun] 3-10:30pm
Visited: Feb 2015
Just opened in Nov 2014, 荃二 (Quan Er) is a tiny little boutique on Changle Lu filled with stylish knickknacks collected from Japan. I met 文林 (Wen Lin), one of the three shop owners, right before leaving for Paris through a magazine interview. A soft-spoken man from Sichuan, Wen is the Associate Director of the lifestyle section at Bund Pic and travels often to Japan for work. Throughout the years, he and his colleagues have accumulated an impressive collection of miscellaneous goods, which led to the birth of Quan Er. The point is not to really make money, otherwise they wouldn’t be open during such short hours – 8-10pm on weekdays and 3-10:30pm on weekends – but simply a way to share their collections with like-minded others. As to who comes and who buys…it’s all just “going with the flow.”
The shop owners select the products based on personal preference, and everything on display are things they’d happily use at home. Among their collections, there are works from famous Japanese artists like 井山三希子 (Mikiko Iyama), 花岡隆 (Yutaka Hanaoka), 三谷龍二 (Mitani Ryuji), and 巖田智子 (Iwata Tomoko), though artist names are not advertised in the shop. Instead, they prefer to have guests browse through the selection and choose base on the products themselves.
