xi's moments
Home | Books

RAYS OF HOPE from a hidden book trove

By Yang Yang | China Daily | Updated: 2020-06-06 09:33

The Poetry Tower is stunning, and the transformation allowing people to climb to the top on numerous compacted layers of fan-shaped wooden stairs that are attached to a single pillar in the middle. [Photo provided to China Daily]

When cities around China were locked down because of COVID-19, bookshops struggled to survive by selling products online. Celebrated ones such as One-Way Street Bookstore in Beijing called the public for help, calls that seem to have fallen on enough sympathetic ears to give the shops cause for optimism. However, for many other bookshops whose profits had been razor thin even before the virus appeared, and notwithstanding their efforts to drum up business online, the future does not seem as rosy.

Against that backdrop, when the Shaxi Bai Ethnic Bookstore opened in May, those who heard the news or went there were both amazed and worried.

Qian says that since the opening on May 1 the shop has had more visitors than it had expected, "visitors from Shanxi province, Sichuan province, Taiwan, Guangzhou, and so on".

Liu Yating, 28, manager of the bookshop, agrees. A team of four people run the shop from 10 am to 7 pm. The number of visitors usually increases after 11 am.

Besides tourists, villagers make up another main group of visitors to the bookshop, older people and children in particular. The best-selling products are books, accounting for more than half of current sales, Liu says.

|<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next   >>|
Global Edition
BACK TO THE TOP
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349