Leaving Shanghai Book City for a while, what is the most worth looking forward to?

At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, two famous shops on the same road in Shanghai became popular. One is the XinghuaLou, which was founded in the first year of Qing Xianfeng and has a history of 170 years so far, the old shop is newly decorated, and the tea market has been restored every morning, and it is difficult to find a seat; the other is the Shanghai Book City, which has been completed for 23 years, and bids farewell to readers on the day of the birthday, and meets in the near future in 2023 with a new look.

This big road in Shanghai is called Fuzhou Road. At that time, the "four major bookstores" of Zhonghua Bookstore, Commercial Press, World Bookstore and Dadong Bookstore originated here, and the Declaration, Times and News Daily flourished in the nearby three-legged. From the 1920s to the 1930s, under the influence of the "May Fourth" Movement, newspapers were the vanguard of supporting the patriotic movement, advocating new culture, disseminating Marxist-Leninist ideas and throwing themselves into the anti-Japanese salvation. At about the same time, a large number of left-wing writers, such as Mao Dun, Hu Yuzhi, Shen Yanbing, Tian Han, and Jin Zhonghua, entered major bookstores as editors or leaders, and Zou Taofen founded a life bookstore on Fuzhou Road, with Sha Qianli as editor-in-chief and progressive books and periodicals.

Since 1949, especially in the more than 40 years after the reform and opening up, fuzhou road, the former "four roads", compared with the "big roads" such as Nanjing Road, is also a commercial street, and has more cultural elements and cultural characteristics. Whether it is the Shanghai bookstore that specializes in old books, or the ancient book bookstore, foreign language bookstore, science and technology bookstore, and then to the pen and ink stationery stores led by "old-fashioned" leaders such as Yang Zhenhua, Zhou Huchen, Cao Sugong and HSBC Paper on the whole street, they are lined up one after another. So that Fuzhou Road has the reputation of "the first street of Chinese culture", which is naturally formed in the hearts of readers who come from near and far, for a long time.

Shanghai Book City can also be said to be one of the special scenery. 23 years ago, the grand opening of Shanghai Book City is still vividly remembered by many people. In previous years, on weekends and holidays, winter and summer vacations, or even during the Lunar New Year, the book city was crowded with people in the morning and evening, and the scene of readers sitting on the floor and holding their hands on the floor was also worthy of a charming cultural landscape in Shanghai.

In the past 23 years, the growth of Shanghai Book City has also coincided with the personal growth of readers and the changes and development of our city. Although the book city is reloaded in the old store, as soon as I heard that the book city was going to close, many readers were very reluctant and even a little dazed, which was completely understandable. This feels like a kind of intimate thing that I usually get along with myself in life, and one day it suddenly disappears, adding a sense of loss.

The habit of going to the bookstore, the habit of holding a roll in hand, the habit of retaining such a "slow life" norm in the fast-paced rush – I think this is the "soft power" that our city is always on. Some people also say that today's Fuzhou Road seems to be more like a commercial street of stationery supplies, on culture, Shaoxing Road, Wukang Road, Anfu Road, these are the leaders. Of course, the latter are all places with a strong literary atmosphere, but there is no need to underestimate the significance of Fuzhou Road. Quite simply, a collection of poetry, books, paintings, printing, carving, plastic arts and ink making technology in one of the landscape ink ingots, a fresh volume of simple and elegant notes, a customized wolf pen, even if it is a pair of golden wedding pens, of course, are stationery, supplies, but the historical and humanistic spirit and its value carried in it are by no means just the four words "stationery supplies" can cover.

As Mr. Cheng Shifa once inscribed a sentence for the Shanghai Ink Factory, "Dragon musk gold is not expensive, ink sweat is the soul", the culture of the cultural street, can not be in this "soul" word?

Speaking of Fuzhou Road, the Tiantou Stage, which is hundreds of meters west of Shanghai Book City, has long been famous all over the world, and it is also the only remaining theater on Fuzhou Road after 1949. As early as 1911, at the mouth of Hubei Road (formerly known as Daxin Road) adjacent to Shucheng today, there was a "Dangui First Stage", where Mei Lanfang sang red, and Qi Pai's "Chasing Han Xin Under Xiao He Moon" premiered here. At the same time, the organs of the Sixth Politburo of the Communist Party of China were in a lane near Tiantou; Liu Yuchao, who was then secretary general of the Shanghai Bureau of the Central Committee, together with his wife Liu Shuqin, took over the cover work of the Second Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party, and the meeting was held in their home.

What do you mean by mentioning these things? I would like to say that the cultural atmosphere of a city, a society, and a group of individuals cannot be arbitrarily cut, and the red culture, the Shanghai culture, and the Jiangnan culture are often intrinsically linked. And a bookstore, a theater, a road, the special significance of a city, but also in the addition of a different footnote to the word "culture".

Getting up early and having morning tea in the Apricot Blossom Building is a culture; leaning on the pillow to read a few pages of old and new books is even more a culture. The future Shanghai Book City is definitely no longer a huge and traditional book hypermarket, and I believe it will have a more wonderful and shapeless appearance. We should never just think of it as a "flagship store."