The Bookstore at Oriental Pearl TV Tower’s Gate 8

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum

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’.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
Tea and cake

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).

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
One of the gardens

Inside, it is an unexpected oasis of calmness, though. When you enter the bookstore you are in the Café area.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
Nice desk accesories

Coffee and cakes aren’t cheap here, but then again they aren’t that much more expensive than in nearby chains like Starbucks.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
The bookstore is split into different small buildings

The bookstore consists of several small building, all encased in the garden that surrounds them.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
..and another building

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.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum

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..

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum

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.

Pearl Life Aesthetics Museum
Next to the Oriental Pearl Tower (Image from Apple Maps)

2 thoughts on “The Bookstore at Oriental Pearl TV Tower’s Gate 8”

  1. 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.

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