Forget waiting for the future. In the heart of Beijing city’s tech-rich E-Town district, doors have swung open on what’s being billed as the world’s first humanoid robot mall, a four-storey cathedral to chrome, code, and pure imagination.
Here, a visitor can sip coffee brewed by a stainless-steel barista, challenge a chess master with a silicon brain, or share an elevator with an eerily lifelike Albert Einstein (price tag: about US $97,000). Down another aisle, robotic dogs pad silently past animatronic emperors, poets, and scientists, Qin Shi Huang nodding wisely beside Isaac Newton, while Li Bai recites verses without missing a beat.
The place is part shopping center, part science-fiction movie set. More than 100 robot types from 200 brands are on offer, from $278 gadgets to multi-million-yuan humanoids capable of cooking, painting, or dispensing medicine with surgical precision.
And it’s not just for browsing, the mall doubles as an arena for robotic showdowns. Expect football matches with AI strikers, track sprints where metal feet blur into streaks, and dance-offs that would make TikTok influencers blush. Upstairs, a robot-run restaurant turns out meals faster than a human chef can shout “order up!”
Wang Yifan, one of the directors, calls it “the front door to a new civilization,” a place where humans can get comfortable living side by side with machines. It’s a vision amplified by China’s multibillion-dollar push into AI and robotics, a national strategy backed by subsidies and a rumored 1 trillion yuan fund for startups.
The opening comes just before the 2025 World Robot Conference and the first-ever World Humanoid Robot Games, where teams from more than 20 countries will compete for supremacy in speed, agility, and sheer technological flair.
Beijing’s new Robot Mall is where worshippers go to meet their future overlords… and maybe take one home!
