Xujiahui

Xujiahui
Central shopping district of Xujiahui
Simplified Chinese	徐家汇
Traditional Chinese	徐家匯
Literal meaning	Xu family junction
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xújiāhuì Wu Shanghainese Romanization Zikawei

Xujiahui, also spelt Zikawei or Ziccawei from Shanghainese, is a locality in Shanghai, China. It is a historic area of commerce and culture administratively within Xuhui District, which is named after the locality. The area is a well-known precinct for shopping and entertainment in Shanghai. It is served by the Xujiahui Station of the Shanghai Metro.

Xujiahui literally means "Xu's junction" - or, more precisely, "property of Xu family at the junction of two rivers" in Mandarin. The "Xu family" refers to the family of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), China's most notable Catholic convert. Most of what is now Xujiahui was once the ancestral home of the Xu family. Baptized by famed Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, Xu Guangqi and his descendants donated large plots of land to the Catholic Church, including the site of the St. Ignatius Cathedral.

Pronounced in the Shanghainese dialect of Wu Chinese, it is called "zi-ga-wei". During the 18th century it was known by Shanghai's western residents as "Ziccawei" or "Siccawei" (English) or "Zikawei" or "Zi-ka-wei" (French). These names survive in the names of some institutions, such as the Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei, and the area is still listed in a number of contemporary guidebooks and literature as "Zikawei" or some variant thereof.

With land donated by Xu Guangqi's family and those acquired by other means, the Society of Jesus established a grand cathedral as well as an entire one square mile complex that covers most of present-day Xujiahui. In addition to the cathedral, the French Jesuits also built orphanages, monasteries, schools, libraries and the Xujiahui observatory () (now the Shanghai Bureau of Meteorology).

In time to become the stronghold of Catholics in East Asia, one of the first structures to be built by the Jesuits was the St. Ignatius Cathedral in 1847, later reconstructed in 1906. The Cathedral is located on what is now known as North Caoxi Road and is still referred to in English as the St. Ignatius Cathedral. The sign on the street calls it simply "Catholic Church." The cathedral was featured in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's 1987 film Empire of the Sun.