Another Shanghai post and a quick look at another bookstore. This one is in Shanghai’s Pudong district, very close to the Oriental Pearl Tower. The official English name seems to be ‘Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum’.
It’s one of the most unusual bookstores I have seen. It is directly outside some of the busiest streets of buzzing Shanghai, the most populous city in the world (more inhabitants than Australia or more than Ireland, Austria and Switzerland together).
Inside, it is an unexpected oasis of calmness, though. When you enter the bookstore you are in the Café area.
Coffee and cakes aren’t cheap here, but then again they aren’t that much more expensive than in nearby chains like Starbucks.
The bookstore consists of several small building, all encased in the garden that surrounds them.
People can sit there and read a book, while enjoying their hot drinks.
Most tables also have buttons you can press to summon a helpful employee.
The whole place was extremely clean, but despite outside being very busy (nearly chaotically busy) there was only one other customer (except us) in all the small buildings..
I hope this kind of bookstore can survive. I assume it is somehow subsidised, but I am not sure how long that will last in a fast changing place like Shanghai.
Very interesting. Subsidised by whom?
It seems to be subsidised by a chain of book stores and an interior design / furniture store. Going there feels so surreal. Outside it is so busy, the pavements are just packed with people and if you want to enter the adjacent square (just behind the garden) you even have to queue to get your bags x-rayed and to go through a metal detector. One of the busiest places in the most populous city on earth. Then just next to it there’s this ’empty’ shop that feels like from a parallel universe. So calm and quiet.