The 2025 Shanghai Digital Shopping Festival kicked off in style in the city on May 17 — World Telecommunication and Information Society Day — launching a month-long celebration of innovation in information and communication technologies.

This year's festival features new shopping experiences centered on the field of ACGN — Anime, Comics, Games and Novels — along with digital services tailored to senior citizens.

At the heart of the opening weekend was a special market on May 17-18 at Oriental Fisherman's Wharf, the popular State-owned fish market in Shanghai's Yangpu district.

The market showcased cutting-edge products across sectors such as culture and tourism, entertainment, education and daily services, drawing enthusiastic crowds.

One highlight was a smart behind-the-ears hearing aid made by iFlytek — described as the industry's first medical-grade device that combines both audio and visual features.

According to booth representative Shi Yadong, the hearing aid uses artificial intelligence and voice technology to convert speech into real-time text, improving the transcription accuracy by 95 percent and speech intelligibility by 20 percent.

This year's digital shopping festival also launched a special initiative offering a range of services to older adults.

In one of them, Chinese delivery platform Meituan introduced exclusive meal delivery packages and hosted community events and JD Express launched a senior-friendly, one-click delivery app.

Elsewhere, online grocery platform Dingdong Maicai unveiled an AI-powered, voice-interactive meal planner; Ctrip's Senior Club offered tailored trips such as camping and cruise packages and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — encouraged elderly content creators, while partnering with the Seniors University of China to offer free online courses.

The festival also spotlighted the "Guzi economy" — a term from ACGN culture referring to merchandise such as badges, cards and keychains.

Related events included the launch of a carnival themed on popular Chinese manga and anime series One Piece, special promotions at ACGN-themed stores in the Metro City shopping mall and other pop-up events at the Hopson One mall in the Wujiaochang shopping area.

Ge Dongbo, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, said the city's digital consumption is  advancing in two key areas.

One is the diversification of products, with new smart devices and AI services. The other area is innovation in business models, with emerging formats like livestream shopping, short video marketing and social recommendation platforms.

Moving forwards, plans are for Shanghai to accelerate the integration of AI into consumer services and promote the commercialization of frontier technologies such as autonomous driving, smart wearables and brain-computer interfaces.

The city also plans to continue to expand its 5G network and enhance its computing power infrastructure.

Sources: Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, Shanghai Observer, official WeChat account of Shanghai Yangpu Media Center at "shanghai-yangpu"