Bookshops: Talk of demise is exaggerated

Inside the Eslite bookstore in Suzhou. [Photo by Yang Yang/ China Daily]

in the mainland at the end of November. It will open another bookstore in Shanghai this year.

Librairie Avant-Garde in Nanjing, which Western media has called the most beautiful bookstore in China, has opened 11 stores since 1996. Last year it opened a philanthropic library in a place of residence for the She ethnic group in Tonglu county, Zhejiang province. It will open another two bookstores this year.

The local bookstore brand in Shanghai Zhongshuge opened its first bookshop in Songjiang district in 2013. By the end of this year it will have three stores in Shanghai. A branch in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is also on the drawing board.

Tao Shuting, 27, has worked for Zhongshuge Bookstore in Songjiang for three years and has risen through the ranks to become general manager. She loves Chinese literature, she says, and is convinced that physical bookstores will not die.

"Just as a person needs to read good books for his or her soul, a city needs good bookstores for its soul."

Although Zhongshuge says it has lost money in the three years since it opened, "we are very likely to make a profit this year", Tao says.

Colin Lang from Taiwan working in Suzhou has been busy since Eslite in Suzhou Industrial Park opened. He is the operations director of the bookstore in the park. Eslite opened in Taiwan 27 years ago and has run at a loss for the past 15 years, according to media reports.

In the three months since its shop in the park opened, business has been good, says Lang.

For him, the closure of offline bookstores provides a good opportunity to reflect on the reasons.