Return of spring: physical bookstores popular again Chinese bookstores regain vitality among readers after overcoming difficult times

from 新西兰《乡音》1218期2023年3月3日星期五

BEIJING’s Wangfujing Bookstore, located in one of the most bustling areas of the capital, has welcomed a steady stream of customers since the beginning of the Spring Festival in January. Reading areas for readers at different ages have been filled with people, some of whom are willing to just sit on the ground to read since seats are always full.

The bookstore’s data shows that it received more than 100,000 customers in January, a sharp increase compared with December 2022. Other bookstores in the city, and even around the country, have also seen huge amounts of readers return since the beginning of the year.

“The worst time is over. We are confident that we can improve the supply of quality reading content in 2023,” Xu Jin, director of the marketing management center at the Beijing Books Building, told media. Meanwhile, industry insiders point out that a spring of physical bookstores in China is coming soon.

Recovery period

Many physical bookstore managers told that book sales and customer volume in these past two months have been much better than the previous two years. Zhuang Ning, the manager of DC Books, a bookstore in Beijing’s Xicheng district with a huge following online, told that since China downgraded management of COVID-19, she has been very pleased to see more guests arrive from other provinces and regions. During weekends, the bookstore sees an average of 200 customers and about 100 sales. Books about culture, history and philosophy have been the store’s best sellers.

Some southern cities have also seen an increase in people heading to bookstores to read and purchase books. Chinese bookstore chain Zhongshuge’s branch in Shanghai’s Xuhui district has been getting at least 6,000 visitors a day recently. Purchases average around 1,000 a day, bringing daily sales to more than 60,000 yuan. “This is a best-ever performance for our bookstore since it opened in 2018,” Zhu noted. The total customer volume of six Shenzhen Publishing Group bookstores exceeded 2.4 million in January, representing an increase of 68 percent over December 2022, the Guangming Daily reported.

In order to handle this increase in volume, the bookstore has updated its coffee bar to improve the consumer experience of readers.

The bookstore also developed a new business model by opening a tutoring camp for teens during schools’ winter vacation, which is an urgently needed service in the nearby community. Meanwhile, many of the physical stores have striven hard to maintain their community online, especially via official accounts and groups on WeChat. Online lectures, WeChat book clubs and book recommendations … assorted measures have been adopted for customer retention.

Bright future

Dong pointed out that the book industry has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, but with the gradual recovery of the economy and tourism, she believes that a new spring for physical bookstores will be coming soon.

The Zhongshuge bookstore’s recent best sellers include Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem and the ancient Chinese military treatise The Art of War, which has become popular again because of the recent hit Chinese TV series The Knockout. “All my bookstore’s seven editions of The Art of War have sold out,” Zhu said.

The optimization of China’s COVID-19 policy means 2023 is set to be a very promising year for physical bookstores, Zhu said, adding that in recent weeks his bookstore has had a full schedule of offline events, such as book signings.

“I’m confident that this year,” Zhu noted. CGTN/GLOBAL TIMES

Chinesestory

Zhadong village: foreign

FOR generations, the longest distance that many villagers in Zhadong, South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, could fathom is travel between their village and Nanning, the regional capital. In 2018, the arrival of a Luxembourg man expanded their horizons across continents. “The first time I came to Zhadong village, I was overwhelmed by its natural beauty. The adobe homes fit perfectly with the green environment,” recalled Hansen Nico Rene, a 63-year-old retired policeman from Luxembourg. “But when we entered the houses, we found people were poor. There was a fireplace, a table, and some chairs. The bathroom, if it was, was in the pigsty. Tap water and electricity were the only things to remind me that they were in the second millennium.”

The village Hansen visited is in a remote mountainous area in Guangxi’s Hechi city. Tucked away in deep mountains, Zhadong village was known for its spectacular karst landscape but also its grinding poverty.

After that visit, Hansen picked up a new identity -- the village’s first Party secretary’s assistant. Across the hills and rivers, Hansen has worked day and night with the local officals, to explore a path toward prosperity for residents. They visited each household, asking about villagers’ income and taking careful notes. “I know everyone in the village,” Hansen said. “We first thought he was a tourist, as he was carrying a camera with him,” a villager said. “But later, we learned he was a volunteer. He is a warm-hearted and hardworking man, always giving a hand to the villagers in their farm work when he sees them. When he visited my home, he helped us shuck the corn, pick mulberry leaves from the fields, and feed our silkworms.”

Under Hansen’s assistance, the village developed featured industries, including cattle and sheep breeding and fruit planting. Their efforts paid off. As of Nov 2020, the whole of Zhadong Village successfully eradicated poverty. Now local authorities are leading the villagers on a new journey to rural revitalization.

China’s first metaverse theater festival to seek out potentials on tech

AROUND for hundreds of years, theaters are now either actively or forcibly embracing digital per-formances amid the rise of the metaverse.

On Feb 25, well-known Chinese theater director Meng Jinghui announced a brand-new theater festival that will debut in April in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, involving the metaverse.

As the first metaverse theater festival in China, the Sphinx Meta Theater Festival, named after the mythological creature from Egyptian lore, will seek out international links with cities including New York, Paris and Berlin with the help of technology.

Later on that day, the organizers of the new festival released a total of 83 visually stunning futuris-tic posters created with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI).

The posters are made with the cooperation of 83 guests from all walks of life, including artists, ce-lebrities, magazine editors and CEOs from tech companies, who were invited by the festival to input six prompts into an AI image generator to produce extraordinary art showing the future of theater in China.

In addition to the posters, the theater festival, set to run from April 15 to May 7, will include nine sections, including a metaverse theater stage, multi-media interactive exhibits, summits and forums and a sharing market, aimed at discussing potential breakthroughs in the future of theater as well as the limitations of AI technology.

Cultural corner

Jiaonan New Year painting: revitalizing intangible cultural heritage for a vibrant future

TIAN Sheng, an inheritor of the Jiaonan New Year painting, was pleased to be surrounded by young visitors who were admiring his exquisite creations at an exhibition recently.

“In recent years, we have incorporated some of the unique elements from the Jiaonan New Year painting into our products, and they have become an instant hit,” he said, picking up a porcelain tea set depicting vivid scenes of sowing seeds and harvesting.

The exhibition was held as part of China’s first annual conference on the protection of intangible cultural heritage that wrapped up in Xi’an in Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

A municipal-level intangible cultural heritage item from Qingdao in East China’s Shandong Province, Jiaonan New Year paintings draw on the features of traditional Chinese New Year paintings as well as the artistic touches of traditional Chinese Gongbi paintings and paper cuttings.

All these characteristic elements come together to create a fine style of art with vibrant tones and flamboyant figures. This distinctive style gives the artworks a touch of elegance, making them popular.“Intangible cultural heritage can truly be appreciated and passed down to future generations only when it is integrated with modern aesthetics and people’s daily lives,” Tian said. XINHUA