It
Is sometimes a magnetic field of art
Sometimes a hall of knowledge
Sometimes a path through culture
Sometimes a deep pit of delights
It
Is sometimes a valley of thought
Sometimes a sofa for feelings
Sometimes a garden of poetry
Sometimes a mirror of the heart
From Beyond Book Story.
This Wuwai Bookstore
Sits on the fourth floor of Building B, Renxinhui, Wangjiawan
In Hanyang District, Wuhan
With its simple, fresh, free-spirited style
Readers consider it the most beautiful bookstore in Wuhan
Among the Wuwai bookstores I’ve seen
There’s also this gleaming, lavish one
This July, the theme of Most Beautiful Bookstore Week is “Bookstores are the way out of every lonely city.” Leung Man-tao’s interpretation is that reading has always been lonely, not because no one reads anymore, but because reading is a moment of facing ourselves. I can’t say I entirely agree with that interpretation, but it is convincing.
When asked what a bookstore really means to a person and to a city, Shuhei Aoyama answered, “For me, bookstores are increasingly places to communicate and have experiences, places to meet someone new or come across something new.” Zhi An also said, “For a city, bookstores and books are both ways of dealing with loneliness”…
As for my own answer, I actually thought about it for a long time. Turning it over and over, I kept feeling that their answers already contained my thoughts. That left me troubled by a question: did I really not have any new, interesting thoughts of my own?
The bookstore closest to school is near the Optics Valley Square bus stop. I’ve been a few times, and every visit inevitably means spending money. (ww Books in physical stores are so, so, so expensive…) I’ve met a few people and noticed a few things there. Once, while I was looking for a book, a boy I didn’t know came over and made awkward small talk. It was painfully awkward, and being approached like that felt very unnatural to me. Still, I answered him out of politeness…
Another time, a boy again appeared suddenly behind me. His voice made me jump. I was leafing through a book called There’s Someone in My Head Who Doubts Himself and Thinks He Knows Better. Even more frighteningly, he opened in English… Later, he told me that his extracurricular English teacher had given them an assignment: go somewhere with a bit of atmosphere and start conversations in English with strangers. It would improve both their spoken English and their social skills (their ability to strike up conversations with strangers). Honestly, I suspect he was a Chengxi student, haha.
Another time, I was looking for an English study guide when a young woman suddenly appeared behind me. She spoke first, and again it was English… This conversation went pretty smoothly. She told me a lot about college and gave me plenty of advance warning. She was really nice, and the thing was, by the end we discovered she knew a senior from Minda who had already graduated… But strangely enough, this young woman was a Chengxi student, currently in the advanced class…
(ww I could count my visits to this bookstore on one finger. Why do I keep running into Chengxi students?)
On July 9, I went to Wuhan duo Landlord’s Cat’s music-themed event, “Folk Music and Loneliness,” at Maokong. During it, Chen Zhi said there was a twenty-four-hour bookstore near Wuhan University called Jiuqiu Bookstore. A student from the university went there to study every day and then got into MIT… The name Jiuqiu sounded incredibly familiar. Back at the dorm, I searched for directions, and sure enough, there was a screenshot of the route in my phone’s photo album: a Baidu Maps subway and bus route I’d saved during last year’s National Day holiday…
After endless turns, I finally reached Jiuqiu Bookstore. I wasn’t sure whether it was the one Chen Zhi had meant, but this one was indeed open twenty-four hours. I’d imagined a large, beautifully decorated bookstore. In reality, it was tiny. It had two floors, but the first could fit only one table, and the second had only three tables and a bathroom.
I stayed for more than four hours. Only a few people came in here and there. Mostly, it went like this: someone would sit for a short while, get up, and leave. A little later, someone else would arrive and take the same seat. There were middle-aged people reading, children reading, college students doing homework… There was also a middle-aged woman who briefly looked around with the manager. She seemed to be checking how many people the space could hold, hoping to borrow it for a reading group. I couldn’t hear what kind of group it was…
I think a bookstore is a place that can hide anything, including you.
It is something the world cannot do without. Take Tokyo’s old-book district: without it, I think Tokyo would lose far more than a little of its character.
Finding a corner in a bookstore and sitting cross-legged, whether absorbed in a book or leaning against something solid nearby for a nap, is wonderfully comfortable.