Being a nerd, I dedicated a day in Shanghai to exploring the bookshops. I love books, as a medium and as objects and am always interested to see the different stories, trends and designs in the countries I visit. Being in China offered an insight into a part of the world I have not explored before, and naturally I wanted that exploration to cover books.
I visited four different bookshops, three in the Changning District of Shanghai, including a book city, a foreign language book shop and antique and art book shops. The fourth was in the financial district; a sky-high bookstore in the tallest building in Shanghai. Not only were the locations of interest, but the range of the books, the covers and bindings, which I will discuss one store at a time.
Shanghai Book City
This large bookshop takes up seven floors of a building designed by Wutopia Lab (more info here and here). It is striking, set back from the road, looming with its aluminium façade, and not immediately recognisable as a bookstore. The entrance resembles a gift shop, with tote bags and games on display. It is up the first set of many escalators that the monumental shelves become apparent.
Soaring high out of reach and disregarding the boundaries of floors and ceilings, the shelves, made of pale wood and light, give the bookstore the feeling of a cathedral. On lower shelves, the books are lined up, spine to spine, but many shelves display singular books, forward-facing, covers displayed like artworks. Each floor worships a different subject and genre, with tables piled high with non-fiction and biographies in one section, fiction, genre fiction and light novels in another, a floor for children's books, a floor for school books and a floor for educational materials, histories and art books. It is truly a cathedral of the tome.
The design sensibilities of the book covers immediately struck me as different to the Western, European and English-language books I know, with a wider trend of focusing on text. With the inherent beauty of written Chinese, and a long history of calligraphy, many covers focus on typography, with the design elements intended to highlight the title. Chinese book covers are not afraid to leave space, far more so than the book covers with which I am more familiar. In contrast to British book covers, the colours are often subdued and subtle, often using pattern over imagery, with plenty of negative space and room to breathe.
I did also look closely at the bindings and spines, of course. One book in particular, shown above, was of great interest with an exposed spine wrapped around with a paper cover. The paper quality was wonderful, the block print style design embossed to add texture, and the glued kettle stitch spine displayed the binding of the signatures. I have seen this trend of exposed spines emerge several years ago, first seeing it on a hardcover picture book in Germany. Although not (yet) prevalent, it was interesting to see that this feature is being introduced internationally.
Looking at the books, I was interested to note which, and how many, books from the Western literary canon had been translated. I spotted a few classics, but there were few contemporary books translated into Chinese. My next stop was further down the street, and I was interested to see which translated works I would find there.
Shanghai Foreign Language Bookstore
I always appreciate seeing English as a foreign language, a minority outside of the mainstream. I think it is healthy to experience being in a minority, with the locals staring at the strange foreigner! It gives excellent perspective, I find.
So it was interesting for me to see which books would be available at this Foreign Language Bookstore. The ground floor was dedicated mostly to non-Chinese fiction, with half the space for English books and a few rows of shelves with books in Spanish, French, Japanese and more. I quickly realised that many books were imported; originally written in English and supplied here in English. I recognised many covers, with some classics and many contemporary titles, particularly popular genre fiction novels.
I was happy to discover that one small section contained the books for which I was searching; Chinese novels translated into English. Here, I found popular classics, epics, biographies and fairy tales. I bought my dad a copy of 'The Legends of the Condor Heroes' by Jin Yong, a wuxia martial arts favourite among all Chinese dads and uncles, and my mum 'Big Breasts and Wide Hips' by Mo Yan, highly acclaimed feminist writing within China.
Shanghai Antiquarian and Art Books
The next bookstore was a narrow maze of shelves and tables that seemed to wind ever deeper into the low-ceilinged building. The front portion displayed large instructional books, guides on drawing anatomy, still life, shadow and light, landscapes and more. In Chinese art education, there is right and wrong way of drawing, and students must learn correct form and technique. Further into the bookstore, the subjects of the books turn to calligraphy. There were also instructional guides, but deeper into the book labyrinth, old books and collections appeared, bound beautifully to reflect the elegant penmanship.
Traditional stab binding
Corner details
Book box
Collection of four books
Here were books with traditional stab bindings, decorative details on the corners. Books with wooden covers and exposed spines, the bindings kettle or coptic stitching. Concertina-style books, folding out endless pages with historic examples of calligraphy. Book boxes wrapped in intricate silk designs, held with bone closures, opening like flowers. Some were small enough to carry in a pocket, others were too large to be opened with just one hand. The range of bindings, the designs and forms, were inspirational to see.
Wooden covers and exposed spines
Concertina-style book
Duoyun Bookstore
In stark contrast, in Pudong, the financial district and trade zone of Shanghai, stand a trio of mega-skyscrapers that pierce the clouds and look down on all that surround them. The aggressive modernity of this district, all in metal and glass, was almost the opposite of the delicate handcrafted books I had just seen. My goal in this contemporary landscape was to find the tallest skyscraper, Shanghai Tower at 632 metres tall, which houses a sky-high bookshop, Duoyun Bookstore. On the 52nd floor, of a total 128 floors, the vast floor to ceiling windows of the café show a panorama of the city. From between the bookshelves, the peaks of nearby skyscrapers can be seen, with a distant haze obscuring the endless buildings of Shanghai.
Finding a lift to the 52nd floor is the first challenge, but after running around the ground floor, brushing shoulders with expensive business suits, the ride up is stomach-droppingly fast. Access to the café is granted with the purchase of any extortionately expensive menu item. After selling a kidney, and elbowing a space by the window, the view is truly impressive. The river which seems as wide as a lake on the ground is reduced to a twisting ribbon and the endless apartment buildings, malls and skyscrapers that all seem to rise high above the street, become a neatly organised scale model. Human activity at street level is barely visible. Buildings march to the horizon.
It becomes difficult to focus on the small scale of books with such a vast view beyond the window. Being eye-level with clouds gives a sense of vertigo that makes it hard to think about the depth of the worlds contained in the small rectangular volumes. But the curved and twisting design of the bookstore, with the stacked white shelves, creates a desire to explore. A gap in the shelves leads to a secluded room of books. Tight corners create private alcoves with hidden gems tucked into intersecting shelves. Although this bookstore had much less floor space than the previous bookshops I had visited in Shanghai, the layout still held a sizeable collection from comics and picture books, to translated foreign literature, Chinese classics and genre fiction. Here, again, I noticed the focus on text and minimalistic design on most of the covers.
Overall, it was a good day out in Shanghai, especially with a lunch stop at a Hong Kong restaurant which was playing a screen adaptation of the book I got for my dad! The locations and buildings that housed the bookstores, paired with the interior design, offered exploration, the spaces as interesting as the books themselves. The displays of the books elevated them as artworks. The inclusion of foreign materials was interesting, especially some of the more politically charged Western texts being available to buy in Chinese. I also loved the antiquarian books with their beautiful binding techniques and forms.
It was also insightful and inspirational to see the cover design trends in Shanghai. The focus on calligraphy and text, with a tendency to allow more space and use different, often more subdued colour palettes, was a contrast to the books I am accustomed to seeing in Britain and central Europe, opening up different design possibilities in my mind. Taking note of the approach taken by different cultures, and the varying tastes and trends across the world, can inspire and refresh, and will hopefully lead to creative outcomes in my own work!
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