Photos of Apple’s Chongqing store, opening tomorrow ahead of Chinese New Year

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Apple is scheduled to open a new flagship retail store in Jiefangbei Square in Chongqing, China, its second store in the city.

The beautiful structure borrows Apple’s Pudong store design in Shanghai: an above-ground all-glass cylinder with an Apple logo and a hand-painted mural conceals the actual store located under street level.

Apple invited select members of the press on a tour of the Chongqing store ahead of the grand opening tomorrow at 10am local time and Chinese blog MacX posted a series of images showing the store’s deceptively large underground interior.

All told, five new stores are set to open ahead of the Chinese New Year festivities next month. Here’s what the interior of the Chongqing store looks like.

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Apple’s trademark glass staircase takes visitors from the above-ground glass cylinder down to the lower levels.

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Apple opened its first store in Chongqing last July and is planning to open a third one at the MixC shopping center, which is currently under construction.

Last week, the Hangzhou store opened for business.

The company’s retail expansion in the 1.33 billion people market is at full steam with more than two dozen new Apple Stores opening in China within the next two years, meaning there will be 40 stores open in the country by mid-2016.

In another interesting move, for the first time ever Apple has lumped its retail revenue into other categories. The company did the same with the iPod, meaning Apple’s earnings releases no longer break down unit sales and revenue for the music player.

MacX has many more images so hit the source link below.

Source: MacX (Google Translate)