Xinjiekou (新街口) is Nanjing's central commercial hub, built up around the busiest metro interchange in the city. The area is dense with shopping malls, department stores, restaurants, and office towers. It is not beautiful, but it is alive in the way of Chinese commercial centres — fast-paced, useful, and impossible to navigate without eventually finding something good to eat.
The Deji Plaza luxury complex with its attached art museum, the Jinling Hotel (one of the city's landmark buildings), and dozens of mid-range restaurants are all within the Xinjiekou orbit. This is the part of Nanjing where the city looks most like a prosperous 21st-century Chinese metropolis. The Zhongshan Lu pedestrian zone nearby has the full range of chain stores.