The main tourist attractions in Chengdu may involve historical temples and a giant stone Buddha statue a few hours outside the city, but I can’t really create Push Square content about that.

The multi-storey anime mall next to Tianfu Square, though? Well, that seemed like a good use of my time in China once I was done with all my Tides of Annihilation activities.

If you haven’t read my articles about the upcoming PS5 action game and my visit to Eclipse Glow Games, then I’d encourage you to check those out first.

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Consider this a bonus piece about the local otaku culture.

My story starts on the evening of the panda tour, as I had some free time around dinner to check out a book store about 20 minutes away from my hotel named Winshare.

I’ve recently started building quite a large collection of manga, manhwa, and art books, so I’m always interested to see what local stores stock.

Actually, ever since I arrived in China I’d been feverishly searching for my favourite games from HoYoverse.

I’ve already observed the impact of these particular titles in Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, so I was expecting them to be everywhere in their domestic market.

But outside of an Infinity Nikki pizza promotion – I’d later learn that Arknights: Endfield was sponsoring Domino’s as well – I’d only really seen a few scattered pieces of merch in a small independent store, where the staff assumed I’d be shopping for Pokémon cards.

I got my first sighting of Genshin Impact in the abovementioned shop, as they had the trio of official art books that have been released so far. I know we have Volumes 1 and 2 in the west, but I’m not sure whether the third one is out yet.

One thing I was particularly looking for in this book store was which manhua titles were taking up the most retail space.

I’ve been getting into Link Click, which is originally a Chinese animation (or dong hua) about two individuals who are able to solve people’s problems by entering their memories through photographs.

I’ve only read the comics – which are like those printed Studio Ghibli picture books, which contain key frames from the movies with comic book speech bubbles – so perhaps not the best way to experience the material, but I appreciate how glossy this franchise is overall.

I did expect to find a good amount of Link Click in China prior to my arrival and ultimately I wasn’t disappointed, but I suppose it was the titles that aren’t currently available in English that really caught my eye.

For example, I loved the look of this particular title named Biao Ren (or Blades of the Guardians) which started serialisation in 2015.

Quite a few different stores had all 13 volumes for sale, and I’ve since learned a movie adaptation with Jet Li came out earlier this year, perhaps explaining why it was being promoted so prominently right now.

Apparently the artist behind this one had no formal training prior to conceiving the series, so spent four years learning to draw before beginning work on the project earnestly. That’s dedication!

Before I hit up the anime mall – we’re getting there, I promise – I wanted to take a detour to another more general shopping centre with an official Pokémon store.

Yes, I know it’s Push Square so please indulge my digression just briefly, but this had some exclusive items, including a Pikachu plush in traditional Chinese garbs (both male and female versions).

There was also a lot of Pokémon Pokopia merch which I assume is everywhere in Japan following the popularity of the Switch 2 release; I settled for a neat little Pokémon Green keyring, which I’m guessing originated from a gashapon machine.

Right, with some omurice in my belly, I headed to Tianfu Hooot (not a typo), which is the abovementioned anime mall and my intended destination.

I’d read a little bit about this place online, but I think its scale did ultimately exceed my expectations.

It’s connected to the Tianfu subway station, so ultimately encompasses an underground mall filled with food vendors and small little retail stores.

Then you’ve got roughly eight floors of anime merch, with some chain stores and many independent retailers. On the top two levels are a ton of restaurants, and there’s a market for individuals to sell their wares as well.

I was there on a weekend, so there were a lot of teens hanging out with friends in full cosplay.

I’ve seen this phenomenon before in Taipei, where a lot of school kids will dress up as their favourite characters to go to Starbucks or McDonald’s.

Many people were cosplaying as characters from Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, but I did also see several dressed as the heroes from various anime, like Naruto and Bleach.

My main shopping strategy was to find merch I’d never seen before from my favourite games, like Zenless Zone Zero and Wuthering Waves.

I was also eager to see whether the newly released NTE had made any kind of impact yet, but I didn’t find a single item related to the game. Nothing.

To be honest, it was specifically in this mall where I was able to appreciate the impact of HoYoverse’s games. They were everywhere.

Many of the retailers were selling similar items, but I think they had access to the newest stock. For example, there was tons of Angels of Delusions stuff from Zenless Zone Zero, which I imagine is only just filtering its way into other countries.

The popularity of Arknights: Endfield also struck me.

Don’t get me wrong, this game seems like it’s been a hit worldwide, but there were a lot of items relating to it considering it’s still relatively new. I was stunned to see Gryphline already has an art book out for this one.

I suppose a lot of the enthusiasm stems from the fact that Arknights is already a well-established mobile game, so there was always going to be a built-in fanbase for this larger-scale open world pseudo-sequel, which cleverly incorporates automation aspects.

I was also surprised to see the prominence of King of Fighters, which is something that surprised me in Taiwan as well.

As I understand, this series – and the NeoGeo in general – established itself quite strongly in China due to the existence of swappable cartridges, which made them more affordable in smaller arcades. Bootleg cabinets also played a part.

I ended up buying a couple of King of Fighters 97 trinkets, which were sold in “blind packets”, as is the case with everything in Asia these days. I didn’t really get the characters I wanted, but such is life.

One item I was particularly excited to find was a Honkai: Star Rail illustration book, sold by an independent retailer.

My belief – and someone can correct me if I’m wrong – is that this was distributed to Chinese players for free on a first come, first served basis. I think it was limited to a few million units.

If you try and import this from eBay or other auction sites, you could be spending anywhere from $80 upwards, so I was absolutely delighted to pay about $20. It was unquestionably my prize find of the visit.

I also had no idea Zenless Zone Zero was now selling trading cards. I know there’s a Wuthering Waves TCG launching in Japan next month, but these gorgeous cards really took me by surprise.

I didn’t open them until I got home and I wish I would have bought more now. There’s no “game” aspect so these are more akin to Topps cards than Magic the Gathering or One Piece, but they include scenes and artwork from the title and are really beautifully made. The cards themselves are surprisingly thick and sturdy.

I suppose it wasn’t a huge surprise to see several music shops within this anime mall as well, all mostly selling K-pop records.

It’s been over two years since NewJeans last released a song, so the fact that the group is still widely visible worldwide is a testament to their impact I think. There were a bunch of albums and posters I spotted while wandering around.

To be honest, I didn’t see anything in here that’s not available globally, but I still picked up an I-dle cassette as the price conversion was good on it.

Looking at the time stamps on my photos, I spent over five hours in this mall in total, so I think that probably helps underline just how large it was.

The next thing I wanted to see was a video game retailer, as obviously China banned the sale of games consoles up until relatively recently.

I could have taken a taxi but I decided to walk about an hour to a computer market, which I was told by a fellow freelance writer had several game retailers inside.

Sony has obviously made a big effort to try and crack the Chinese market, which is mostly dominated by mobile and PC.

While its console is officially for sale in the country, games need to be approved by the government. That means many local players prefer to purchase imported consoles which unlock full access to the bradth of the PS Store.

I wasn’t surprised to find a messy mixture of physical stock at these retailers, spanning some official Chinese releases but mainly Japanese and Taiwanese imports.

It struck me that being a PS5 player here could end up feeling like a shady underground hobby, so I’m not surprised to see mobile games and major PC titles from the likes of Tencent-owned Riot occupy a chunk of the space.

I don’t know enough about the topic to understand whether Sony is making meaningful inroads domestically; I imagine games like Phantom Blade Zero and Tides of Annihilation are going to help.

But with many titles not available on the Chinese PS Store and retail releases set to disappear in January 2028, I wonder how local gamers are going to navigate this.

With hardware prices rising, I feel like it’s going to be an uphill battle for the expectedly expensive PS6 to gain any real footing in the region.

And yet the content coming out of China, developed with a global audience in mind, looks better than ever. Let’s not forget the entire reason I was here was to play Tides of Annihilation, which looks like it’s going to build on the success of Black Myth: Wukong and become another big domestic hit.

I will say, the gacha games I play didn’t permeate as much of Chengdu as I originally expected, but they were clearly present in the right areas. HoYoverse is headquartered in Shanghai, so perhaps it’s even more ubiquitous there.

I really enjoyed my brief time infiltrating the otaku areas, though, and just taking stock of what seems popular in the region right now.

And I’m pretty happy with the merch I brought back, particularly that Honkai: Star Rail art book, which would have cost me a fortune to import.

That pretty much wraps up my travels in China, so thanks once again for indulging me for one more article, folks. And cheers again to the Eclipse Glow Games team for having me over for the press event so I could share all this.