Shanghai's largest underground textile and shopping center, covering an area of 57,000 square meters, officially opened yesterday at Pudong's Science and Technology Museum.

The center, named the Shanghai Asia-Pacific Plaza and close to the subway station, contains 1,000 vendor stands.

The stands were relocated from the downtown Xiangyang Clothing Market and markets along the Bund, and were dismantled to make way for municipal projects, said Dai Zhibin, assistant to the plaza's general manager.

Dai said the center, with a total cost of 500 million yuan ($71.37 million), aims to serve more than 10,000 buyers daily, 70 percent of whom are from overseas, by offering more than 10,000 kinds of clothes, leather, garments and tourism articles.

The center is expected to generate annual sales of 720 million yuan in the first year, which will be doubled in the next three to five years, he said.