Tou says that they were confident about opening this new store, and their past experiences have given them the resolve to weather any storm. In 2015, before the new store opened, Zhuang even worked as a regular shop staff at an antique bookstore to better hone his eye for quality older books. For buyers in the know, the price is still a bargain for what they’re getting. When they come across a gem, they’ll spare no expense in purchasing it. They regularly hunt down vintage books, searching through old markets and Taobao listings. To find the most sought-after editions of a book requires experience and industry know-how, which Zhuang and Tou are in no lack of. For true bookworms, these are an essential part of the literary experience. Even though a book may have the same content and text, depending on the publishing date and the publisher, each print will be completely different. “The different editions we carry in our shop are what sets us apart.”Īs he sees it, the differences between varying editions are one of the qualities that e-books can’t replace. “We’re not just selling books,” says Tou. With their affordable but quality offerings, the space has become a place for literature lovers of all stripes.
The shop mostly deals in secondhand literature, all of which have been curated with a preference towards art, history, and philosophy. The new location is a 30-square-meter store populated with wooden shelves loaded to the brim. The two then split ways to open their own stores, with Ya reopening the poetry bookstore and Zhuang reopening Rhino Bookstore in a new location with his friend, Tou Tou. Their next venture was a store specializing in poetry books, which similarly didn’t find footing. It shuttered its door just a year later, but the two then owners-Zhuang Jianguo and Ya Shu-refused to give up on their dreams so easily. Their first location opened in 2007, a distance away from downtown in the Minhang District. Situated alongside Suzhou River, Rhino Bookstore is a secondhand bookshop that has been through its share of ups and downs. From the owner’s motivations to their curatorial approaches, every store is constantly changing, adapting, and hard at work in cultivating the local literary scene.
No two bookstores are alike, and this is precisely what makes places such as Lekai Books, Melibrary, Rhino Bookstore, Distance Bookstore, Upper Bookstore, and Text&Image so irreplaceable. The existence of these places speaks not only to the tenacity of the owners but also to the fact that there are still a handful of pertinacious bookworms who accept no replacement for the tactile experience of reading a paperback. In Shanghai, a city where every inch of land is worth its weight in gold, there are still independent bookstores making it work.
But for a bookstore to truly succeed, what matters above all else are perhaps most dependent on the literature on offer and the people they’re meant for. In this hostile environment, business acumen and clever marketing are essential to survival. A recent industry report of China’s bookstores outlines this grim reality with sobering statistics: between 20, for every new bookstore that opened, an average of 2.6 stores closed down. Considering the proliferation of e-books and online shopping, the exorbitant cost of renting a storefront, and the new uncertainties that have arisen from the pandemic, it’s clear that the cards are stacked against physical bookshops now more than ever. In modern times, opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore can almost seem like a fool’s errand. That shows you’re ready to chance some unlikely things.” - an excerpt from Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1978 novel The Bookshop “They’re saying that you’re about to open a bookshop. This article was originally published on Neocha and is republished with permission.
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