No. 1 Yaohan Company Limited is the first Sino-foreign joint venture retailing enterprise on Mainland China. In April 1991, Yaohan's CEO from Japan led a trade delegation to Shanghai for a fact finding trip. They liked to open a large shopping mall in Pudong Area. Talks have been held successfully with the Shanghai Municipal Government and they signed a joint venture agreement. The state's government approved the project in May 1992, and then laid the foundation in September the same year. Completed in 1995, the building is named the New Century Commercial Building. In 12th December that year, the No. 1 Yaohan Department Store opened to business, for which there were 1.07 million people entered the shopping mall simultaneously. This has set the record of the largest crowd gathering in a department store within a short time and the event has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

The New Century Commercial Building has a construction area of 145,000 sq. m. Businesses are ranging from daily commodities, men's and women's fashion to fine art craftworks and high class sedans in the ten-floor shopping mall. Of which the 8th and 9th floors are pubs, snack stalls and restaurants, two levels of basement are for car parking and a bicycle vault. There are a lot of basic facilities like banks, post office, laundry, beauty parlor and bakery. All of these are catering the needs of local residents and tourists. The whole shopping mall is using state-of-the-art technology in electronic centralized control and monitoring, to ensure the best available environment for shopping lovers.