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n the antique Songjiang’s Cangcheng street, situated Zhang’s rice shop. Since it was established in 2019, it has been not merely a retail store to sell rice, walnuts, or red dates, but a space to save culture concerning agriculture and food.

Mo, the founder and runner of the shop, has been striving to balance her public-welfare plan of promoting culture for free with the need of making money to keep the lights on. The shop is exploring a growing business system that includes community sales events, agricultural products with cultural root, livestream storytelling.

Currently, the shop has evolved into a combination between marketplace and workshop. The shop introduces handmade rice cakes and is opened as a ‘rice cake experience center’, inviting visitors to roll up their sleeves and craft the snacks themselves. Beyond that, it now also sources and retails high-quality agricultural products across the country. This shift allows the public to taste and touch the agricultural history that Mo cherishes.

Outside business hours, Mo devotes herself to a non-profit livestream program. Their goal is to record and share the stories of Cangcheng’s embedded heritage.

Mo said that she does not want Cangcheng to become another tourist trap, with crowded snack streets and identical souvenir stalls, seen in other old towns. She hopes that Zhang’s Rice Shop, and the street around it, will operate in a way where commerce supports culture rather than swallowing it.

The shop relied on public welfare when it first opened in 2019. Mo, a Chongqing native with no prior background in grain or farming, never planned to enter the world of agriculture. The shop served more as a cultural museum than a profit-seeking business. It partnered with the Education Bureau and Culture and Tourism Bureau to develop agricultural labor courses for primary and middle school students, turning the space into a hands-on learning base. Supported by friends who were passionate experts in Songjiang’s local history, the shop exhibited old land deeds, grain coupons and rice-related relics from the community, with many of them donated.

The pandemic had brought challenges, as expenses persisted while income shrank. Yet the store kept open. Mo said that some things were worth preserving even at a cost.

By 2024, as more venues on the street opened and foot traffic slowly returned, the shop began transforming. With a new operator taking over the management of Cangcheng street, it encouraged the shop to adopt a more commercially sustainable model while maintaining its cultural mission.

One new pattern was to sell products beyond locally grown rice. From Xinjiang to Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Mo’s home in Chongqing, farmers met through agricultural training programs began sending samples of walnuts, millet, red dates, and hand-processed grains. Many were harvested or prepared using traditional methods, without using industrial and chemical cleaning and processing treatments. Farmers in Shaanxi showed Mo how their millet was still ground using stone mills, now powered by electricity instead of donkeys but preserving the nutrient-rich germ often lost in machine processing. Others, in remote areas, spoke of crops selling for mere cents per kilogram, harvested with care but unable to reach consumers beyond nearby towns. The shop could help give them a sales window to Shanghai.

Zhang’s Rice Shop has gradually evolved into a modest yet meaningful marketplace where products are valued for both their quality and their cultural narratives. The shop functions not merely as a retail outlet, but as a linking bridge. Its offerings, though simple, reflect a distinct place, history, and way of life, demonstrating how commerce can sustain culture, and culture, in turn, can enrich commerce within a contemporary retail framework.