C sums of light | City needs bookstores, and more scholars need to be readers

Author: Ye Kefei writer, traveler

My memory of Shenzhen Bookstore has been at the level of Shenzhen Book City for a long time. As early as 1991, the Shenzhen Book City, which was born from Xinhua Bookstore, had been listed, opening up the "Book City" era in China. Three years later, the Guangzhou Book Purchase Center opened. In 1998, Beijing Xidan Book Building and Shanghai Book City opened, and the "Book City" model blossomed in China.

Not only to look good and feelings

But perhaps because of being unfamiliar with the city, Shenzhen was a city without an old bookstore in my eyes. It is not like Guangzhou. When you walk in the streets, you will see a small bookstore. Among them, there are still old bookstores for people to "treasure".

Later, the one -stop model of Book City became the standard of many cities, and the small bookstore was unsustainable, and one after another disappeared. Later, the bookstores in the commercial body of major cities became Internet celebrities. Unfortunately, most of them are "model room bookstores".

The reason why it is said to be a model house is that many bookstores in many commercial bodies are often decorated, light on the light, and very emotional. Even in the tall fashion business, it is a maverick.

But because it is a model room, it may be more suitable for taking pictures. You can always see girls who twisted their faces to 45 degrees to play selfies. The flowers and green bookshelves are their background. They will also call a cup of coffee, or hold a book with a book. Of course, these photos are to send a circle of friends, and they often talk about coffee.

But what about the book? If the book is just the background of the bookstore, is the bookstore or a bookstore? Bookstores in domestic commercial bodies are generally not low, but if you want to be authentic, the first thing to do may be insulated from the model house.

Of course, the positive textbooks are, Eslite, Fang Sui and Sicis are all successful examples, but unfortunately, there are not many such examples. In addition to good -looking, what else does a bookstore need in addition to feelings?

The relationship between commercial and bookstores is often a strong combination of tall and fashion in people's impression, but this is actually a weak marriage. Most of the current commercial industries are facing the problem of "people do not like shopping". If they cannot improve taste and sufficient value -added services and experience consumption, it is difficult to attract traffic. Of course, the bookstore also needs the high upper atmosphere of the business, which is the best added value itself.

However, even if the commercial bodies are rented in low rent, it is still difficult for bookstores to make money by selling books, and it is impossible to provide such discounts like e -commerce. Therefore, the combination of "book + cultural and creative + coffee" has become the most common model, and the latter two even become the main source of income for many bookstores.

In the same way, "Cultural and Creative Coffee" attracts many people who come here without reading. In fact, it is a business route -youthy.

Don't remember the bookstore when you were a kid? There are children, young people, middle -aged and old people, each takes what they need. But now, in the beautiful bookstores in the commercial body, there are fewer middle -aged and elderly groups that are still in the current reading of paper.

For many young people, the significance of bookstores as a fashion landmark is even greater than the book itself. This is obviously upside down, the original intention of the bookstore, it is a pseudo -literature. Of course, many commercial bookstores have recognized this, and gradually let the bookstore have the "Internet celebrity" temperament and return to the bookstore.

There is room for reading when waiting

In the issue of bookstores and reading, Europe is a good reference. Europeans' life is slow. Compared to playing with mobile phones, they prefer to talk about in the cafe for an afternoon. Compared with the Internet, they seem to prefer to read. Whether it is a park or a cafe, readers can always be seen. Both large bookstores and bookstores in commercial bodies are very common, and more common are old bookstores in the streets, the latter and even the best leisure place in the community.

In December 2019, I visited a small town named Roszietic on the banks of the Czech River. The European sunset in winter is very early, and it is dark at 4 pm. The small town is too small and the weekend. There is no one in the sky in the sky. The shops and restaurants on the street are closed. I wandered boringly on the street, waiting for the train one hour later. When I turned to a commercial street, the only light came from a bookstore. The old shop owner sat in a heating shop and looked at the newspaper. There were more than a dozen customers in the bookstore. They were reading books quietly. What made me even more touched was that when I walked into the railway station with a small and dim light, the only leisure facility it provided was a row of books on the bookshelf, and the only waiter before I arrived , Sitting on a bench to bow your head and study.

In fact, the bookstores in Chinese commercial body need this kind of scholar, whether young people or old people. If someone reads, the connection between the commercial and bookstores will go further, not only in the form of mall, the form of commercial streets, but also can even extend to small business industries such as gas stations.

Germany is an example, and books are also sold in gas stations. On the way to Stuttgart, I stopped at the highway service area on the way to Stuttgart. I saw a few people standing in front of the bookcase in the gas station, and some people sat aside, drinking coffee while studying. The non -highway gas station also sells books. Once I went to Poland from Shilin, Germany, and my journey was hundreds of kilometers. I suspected that I was too monotonous at the high speed. Passing through an unknown town, refueling at the gas station on the roadside. A car next to it belongs to a German family. The two children took the opportunity to enter the gas station and picked books in front of the bookcase. Parents did not stop and urged. After adding the oil to buy the order, they moved the car to the open space, standing aside and waiting for the children until they purchased two books. Remember to read the news before, the waiting room of a maternal and child health hospital in Shenzhen was equipped with a book, which is also the first book in Shenzhen to enter a public hospital. The "settings" of waiting for reading are of course better than letting children swipe their mobile phones. Although it is a book bar rather than a bookstore, it can still be used as a reference for bookstores.

You can meet if you wander

Real scholars will not enter the bookstore because of their feelings, let alone walk into the bookstore because they want to take a circle of friends. They will enter the bookstore for reading.

This reading needs determine the bookstore to enter the community. It should be in the streets and alleys, in various public facilities, let people go downstairs to enter, and they can meet. At the same time, this bookstore will also have special vitality. They can meet the current needs than the old -fashioned bookstores, and at the same time stay away from the high cost of commercial bookstores.

In the state of large -scale book cities and commercial body bookstores, there have been many small and beautiful community bookstores in Shenzhen in recent years. For scholars, this is of course a good thing.

Source | Jingbao APP

Edit: Chen Jianguo

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