Look at Shigeru Kashima's "Strolling Through Jimbocho" said that there is the world's largest used book street in Kanda Jimbo town, Chiyoda District, Tokyo, Japan, surrounded by universities and publishing houses, just like Charing Cross Street, where the Mark Cohen Old Bookstore in London, England, is located, or West4 Greenwich Village near the Strand Old Bookstore in New York, the United States, are all students and intellectuals who are eager to absorb spiritual food, and probably second-hand bookstores give readers the possibility of exploring the past and the unknown world. And because the affordable discount price of the book (except for some out-of-print books) satisfies some of the possessiveness, and even has the social function of meeting acquaintances by chance.
In Shanghai, there were many discounted bookstores on Fuzhou Road for a while, such as the new cultural used bookstore on Ruijin Road, the Fudan used bookstore on Zhengsu Road, including the Wenmiao Book Market that was previously written about, all of which disappeared because of rents or urban changes. In fact, used bookstores survive by earning the middle price difference by cheap rent and low-cost paper recycled from scrap dealers, and some of them have become e-commerce physical stores on the Internet and have enriched the Internet used book market. However, online prices are polarized, low-priced almost wholesale, relying on running volume to earn a little bit of zero, worrying quality, but also add postage, and the old version of high-priced books worth collecting is getting closer to sky-high prices. Recently, the largest Confucius second-hand book website in China has increased the review of booksellers' business qualifications, so it is not too easy to find the best version of the old book that you want and the right price. In the city, you can go to offline physical bookstores to find treasures, which is now almost a luxury.
One day, because I liked to raise goldfish Lanshou, I searched for the largest ornamental fish and flower market in the city on Lingshi Road in Putuo District. Lingshi Road, only built in 1958, named after Shanxi Lingshi, spans the three districts of Jing'an, Putuo and Baoshan, while the flower and bird market is located in the Putuo residential area, and the surrounding life atmosphere is quite strong. Walking into the green and lush market, I was overjoyed to see lanshou, the king of affordable goldfish, because lanshou is good-looking but difficult to raise, and the price is expensive, so it is not easy to buy a suitable training. Walking deep in the market, I accidentally found that there was a three-story shopping mall in the back row, which turned out to be a "Juqi City" that mainly sold antiques. The City God Temple, Yunzhou Commercial Building and the former Dongtai Road are known as Shanghai's "Panjiayuan", but this trip accidentally crashed in, and observed that this is the real "garden" of fair prices and benefits the people, which sells stamps and coins on the first floor, there are many antique and old book stalls on the second floor, and the stalls on the third floor are crowded every Friday.
Juqi City, located on Lingshi Road in Putuo District
I don't have much interest in antiques and can't identify and appreciate them, but I am like a mouse falling into a rice tank for old books, and the old book stalls on Fridays on the second floor not only have all kinds of second-hand books, but also my favorite villain book comic strips. The owners of Juqi City who sell comic strips seem to be masters of collecting, not only counting the editions, but also sealing the high-priced villain books in plastic bags and stacking them neatly in glass windows and counters. Of course, for customers who want to find bargains, the bosses will also prepare a few sacks of relatively poor products to provide selection.
The second floor of Juqi City
Book stall on the second floor of Juqi City
A comic book stall on the second floor of Juqi City
On the second floor, after looking through a few villain book stalls, and then going inside to go to another elevator to go downstairs, I was pleasantly surprised to find an old bookstore on the side, the hostess was sorting out the book pile at the door, and several rows of martial arts books in the glass cabinet next to it made me instantly excited when I was recently re-fascinated with martial arts.
Inside the used bookstore at the elevator entrance on the second floor
When I looked through the selection, the hostess suddenly said, "Do you want a few books with the wrong version?" Hard to find! I asked, "What's the wrong version?" The lady boss explained to me that in order to sell well in the mainland market for those popular martial arts writers in Hong Kong and Taiwan, most of their names were changed to Jin Yong, Gu Long, and Liang Yusheng, such as Sima Ling, who was the taiwanese writer who was the most changed in the 1980s, and Xiao Yi, Wo Longsheng, Chen Qingyun, Liu Renyang, and Shangguan Ding were also renamed and introduced, and these misprinted books were no longer printed in the 1990s because of the formalization of copyright. Nowadays, it has become the object of martial arts enthusiasts' search and collection. In addition, there are also names such as "Jin Yongxin", "Jin Yongju" and even "Jin Yongzhu" that deceive readers into paying money, just like many commercial blockbusters that have now been copied and remade into B-grade films, of course, there are also conscience works such as the prequel to the Golden Boy's adaptation of "The Legend of the Archery Hero", "The Golden Eagle of the Divine Arrow" and the continuation of the Jin Yong Gulong series of Canglangke.
Misprinted martial arts books
I remember that Mr. Zheng Songmao, the director of the quality café and a senior in the advertising industry, once mentioned to me his experience of reading martial arts serials in his school in Taipei when he was young, when the books were all a novel divided into more than ten pamphlets, and the students borrowed one book to read and secretly circulated it to the next classmate. Elder Zheng said that martial arts novels as the representative of the subculture at that time were naturally the favorite of citizens and students in their leisure time, which shows that the cultural life in Taiwan was also relatively scarce in that era, and Jin Yong's books were not allowed to be published by the Taiwan authorities for a long time, so the martial arts writers represented by the "three musketeers" - Wolong sheng, Sima Ling, and Gu Long - sprung up after a rain. When it was introduced to the mainland by booksellers in the 1980s, this martial arts style immediately swept the streets and alleys, and with the huge sales of serial magazines such as "Legends of Modern and Ancient Times", it witnessed the rise of a new wave of mainland martial arts novel creation such as Feng Jicai's "Divine Whip", Yue Xiao's "Legend of Wudang Mountain", and Nie Yunlan's adaptation of Wang Dulu's "Yujiaolong".
Listening to Mr. Luo Yezhou, who loves books, talked about a common book search memory on The South Shaanxi Road in the 1990s, there was a bookstore specializing in martial arts books, Mr. Luo would come to visit every week when he went to school, every time a new book arrived, Luoyang paper was expensive and sold out, and the Temple of Literature also once became a wholesale center for martial arts novels in east China, and Wen Ruian came to visit the dock at its peak. As for Mr. Luo, the experience of starting to write his own martial arts novels at the most confusing time is similar to mine. It is said that Premier Zhou Enlai also wrote a chivalrous novel "Hero of the Towel" under the pseudonym "FeiFei" when he was young, which shows that the novels of this genre are really worthy of Being Called Chinese adult fairy tales, and teenagers who aspire to slay dragons love to use the imagination and substitution of swordsmen in the novel to uphold justice for Skywalker.
In addition to martial arts books, the owner of the old bookstore on the third floor of Juqi City also vigorously recommended the romance and lament novels of the old Shanghai Mandarin Duck Butterfly Sect, saying that this group of Haipai writers from eighty or ninety years ago had also written martial arts before, such as Gu Mingdao, Zhang Hexhui (Beijing School), Xu Zhuoduo, etc., all of whom were regular columnists of popular literature magazines such as "Saturday", "Red Magazine", "Red Rose", "Mandarin Duck Butterfly Sect", Xu Qiuya's "Jade Pear Soul", Zhou Tianlai's "Sister-in-law in the Pavilion" had been bought and read before. And martial arts novels in that era also belonged to the Mandarin Butterfly faction. It just so happened that recently his friend Ding Xia sent a copy of the "Memoirs of forty Years of Art" written by his grandfather Mr. Ding Shu, a cartoonist he edited, and there are many Mandarin ducks and butterflies in the book, and it seems that the category of research and collection will gradually increase.
Mandarin Duck Butterfly Pie's romance novel
Looking back at the era when the material was not necessarily as rich as it is now, although it was mostly popular literature, it was possible to have such a variety of choices, which further determined the "adventure" journey of continuing to find old books and used bookstores in the future.