Photo of the day: Xintiandi Xmas Selfies

This week’s photo theme is China Plaza Xmas: ostentatious Christmas mall displays in China’s mostly secular megacities.

In the background here you can see Rolling X, a massive Christmas-tree-inside-a-snow-globe that dominates the plaza outside upscale Shanghai mall Xintiandi at the moment. It’s really something — a pulsing, flashing, ambient-music-blaring conglomeration of steel and wires, with an internal slide traveling three stories from its apex down to a ball pit at ground level, and a huge line of kids and parents waiting for their crack at said slide. We’ll have a video of this impressive bit of Xmas architecture — along with some quotes from its builders, Dogma Lab — later in the week, but for now here’s a preview of just how selfie-inspiring this thing is.