Text/Chen Yuqi
"If there is a heaven, heaven should look like a library." This famous quote by the Argentine writer and poet Borges has become the best footnote to the library.
Libraries, as one of the main fields for realizing the universalization of knowledge, have always undertaken the public service functions of collecting books and sharing resources.
But in a small city, there are many more stories happening in the library. Here, the library breaks the silence and changes from one-way output to group co-construction. "It's not just about books, it's about connecting people and people." The head of the library said so.
Wen Lin returned to his hometown of Dali in 2018 and built a library. He took out his collection of nearly 2,000 books and bought nearly 10,000 books. In the past four years, this library has become a "poetry and far away" away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and it has also become a window for children in the small city to look at the world.
Going back to my hometown to build a library sounds poetic, but the reality is always bone-chilling. After 4 years of operation, the revenue of the library can be basically the same as the operating costs. But counting the rent of more than 170,000 a year, the library is still in a state of loss. Wanting to find a way for the library to survive and live long, and not rely on fund donations, Wen Lin is still groping.
Readers read in the library. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
The birth of "Shuriku"
Wen Lin is a native of Dali. Dali is surrounded by mountains on all sides, the city is very small, "take two steps to the countryside." In the era of information blockage and the Internet was not yet developed, books were Wenlin's spiritual world, and his childhood was spent in the study.
He read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and each character in the book has his own mission, "to be a person with some value, there will be a heroic complex."
After graduating from university, Wenlin has been working in the Internet industry. He has been to many cities, and through travel, he has touched the breadth of the world, and through reading, he can understand the depth of the world.
Wen Lin found that Yunnan people do not like to run outside, even if they run out, they will not stay long or return to Yunnan. He thought that he would move the world to Dali, so that the local people in Dali would have free good books to read, especially if they wanted the local children to see more possibilities in the future, go out of Yunnan, and go to the world.
The idea of building a library has always haunted Wen Lin's mind. In 2018, through entrepreneurship, Wen Lin had some funds on hand, and he began to put the construction of the library into action.
Wen Lin found two of his classmates as partners. The three of them looked at a lot of houses in Dali and finally chose a small three-story building located in the prime location of Dali Ancient City. The main road is a restaurant, a homestay, and the library is located in a secluded alley, bustling and quiet.
Wen Lin directly signed a 10-year contract with the landlord and paid the rent for 5 years at a time.
The library is a small Brick and Wood Building in the Bai style, the door comes from the 300-year-old ancestral house of the landlord's family, and the structure of the house, the decoration of the house, the tables and chairs are all wooden. The first floor is a reading space, a sunken design has been made, which can not only allow people to sit and read, but also hold activities, the second floor is the intangible cultural jiama carving experience area, and the third floor is the children's reading hall.
Wen Lin and his friends planted the native plants of Cangshan and Erhai in all corners of the inn. The door is pasted with a pair of yanglian, which reads: "The beautiful scenery of the good day is pleasing to the heart, the English word is good and the ink is good and ancient", and the horizontal criticism: "Walking in the mountains and rivers".
Library gate (Courtesy of interviewee)
As the library's "start-up book", Wenlin took out his own collection of nearly 2,000 books and purchased nearly 10,000 books. During that time, Wen Lin and his partners soaked in Dali's flea market to look for books, and bought almost all the books about Dali's history and culture.
After more than a month of preparation, the library opened. Wen Lin named the library "Shuli", which means "finding the truth of life from books".
Let the library "come alive"
Wen lin hopes to find a model in which the library can survive. At the beginning, Wenlin's idea was to build a library homestay, and use the money earned by the homestay to buy books and feed the library with the homestay.
Later, Wen Lin found that the homestay was always in a state of breakeven. But with the arrival of the epidemic, the homestay can not continue to open.
More people knew about the library, and many people began to donate books to the library. So Wen Lin also began to think, the revenue of accommodation is to make more and more books in a benign model, if there are other ways would not be better?
The concept of "co-construction" and "book for accommodation" was thus proposed. "We don't want to put on a miserable posture, we don't want to let people donate books to us because we don't make money doing a library."
The Library of Books proposes a co-founder system. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Liu Chang, who is responsible for the daily operation of the library, introduced that in the past four years since the establishment of the library, there have been 392 co-builders (excluding enterprise/group co-builders) and 6,053 books have been donated. Together with the library's existing books, the library currently has a collection of nearly 23,000 volumes.
In the beginning, donating 5 books can be exchanged for one night's accommodation. Later, there were more co-builders, there were not enough rooms to live, and the threshold for exchanging books for accommodation was raised to 10 or 20 books.
Wen Lin believes that in traditional libraries, the relationship between readers and libraries is one-way, and the frequency of book updates is low and the quality is uneven. "In the form of co-construction, when the library can update 50 to 100 books a day, it will slowly 'come alive'."
Every day, the library receives books from co-founders. Some people attach their own poems to the book, someone writes to the library, and someone leaves a message on the title page of the book. Librarians register them, label them, take photos, and put them on shelves.
Letters from co-founders received by the library. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Liu Chang described the co-construction as a "collective group portrait": there are documentary filmmakers, university professors, writers, teachers, musicians, and owners of nearby rural libraries, but more are friends who have never met or even never met in Dali.
With the increase in co-construction, the library has become a bridge connecting many book lovers and travelers. Together with the co-founders, Liu Chang organized more than 60 activities last year, where everyone gathered to discuss movies, music, and writing, experience dali's local Jiama and Bai three-way tea culture, hike and read poems in the mountains, rice paddies, and under the stars, and also pay attention to migrant female workers and rural children.
The library also connects co-builders and local residents: drama teachers bring children from the village to do puppet shows, and cultural relics workers take parents and children to re-walk the Tea Horse Trail and personally participate in the protection of local culture.
Co-builders set up biodiversity nature classes for children in the village. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
In addition to collections and activities, the library's space is also "co-built". When Liu Chang goes out to eat, he will let the co-builders who are reading in the library help to watch the door; the light bulb is broken, and everyone will change the handle; friends in Dali will either put snacks, fruits, or put a bouquet of seasonal flowers for the library.
Compared with public libraries, Wenlin felt that in private libraries, books had changed. "We're actually turning books into a connecting bond, and although it's essentially a library, I hope you can get more interesting things here."
"It's not just about books, it's about connecting people and people." Liu Chang said.
"It's better to buy more suites than to open a library"
Since the epidemic, Wen Lin has been working in Beijing for a long time, and the long-term administrator of the library is only Liu Chang. For a while, receiving new books, sorting out books, cleaning, making videos, organizing activities, "the work you can see is basically only yourself."
In Dali, recruiting volunteers for the library is not an easy task. The work of the library is relatively hard, and it has to compete with Dali's many homestays, bars, and cafes. Most of the recruited volunteers can only stay for 1 month, and there are few volunteers who can stay for three or four months.
Liu Chang also encountered suspicious voices. Some people think that it is enough to open a tavern and find someone to talk about music movies, so why should they open a library? Some people also feel that since it is related to knowledge, they should go to volunteer teaching and teach children. "But I think it would be too narrow if education were limited to that."
Liu Chang hopes that the library is a pure reading space, and what they have to do is to protect the reading atmosphere and provide cultural and artistic exchanges, "so that young people can walk in through interest, not because of the pressure of taking the test."
Building a private library sounds poetic, but it can't get around the problem of "money" in the process.
Wen Lin and Liu Chang are constantly trying new ways to make money, through the sale of cultural creations, drinks, holding cultural experience activities, operating script libraries, etc., at present, the library's revenue can be basically the same as operating costs. However, counting the rent of more than 170,000 yuan a year, the library is still in a state of loss.
The experience of The Koma culture can bring a certain amount of income to the library. (Courtesy of the interviewee)
Occasionally, Wen Lin would open the review website and browse everyone's evaluation of the library, and someone wrote: "You must live." ”
This is not only the situation faced by a private library in Shuli.
Wang Zizhou, a professor in the Department of Information Management at Peking University, has conducted research on private libraries in mainland China. Through incomplete statistics on various media reports, at present, there are 444 private libraries on the mainland, with an uneven number of books, accounting for 70.9% of the books in the collection of 10,000 volumes and below. The difficulty of funding and the source of books and periodicals are two major bottlenecks.
Zhang Jin, the founder of Youwei Library in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, also said in an interview with China Philanthropist Magazine that the public will be tired of this way of public welfare fundraising, and there are obstacles to the maintenance of donors, so the funds raised from Internet channels are declining year by year. From more than 800,000 yuan in 2017, more than 600,000 yuan in 2018, it fell to more than 200,000 yuan in 2019.
Before taking charge of the operation of the library, Liu Chang participated in the operation of a number of public welfare book projects. She believes that most of the current pro bono projects rely too much on financial contributions or national project allocations, which has limitations in sustainability.
"That's why we don't want to go the public welfare route now, it's too dependent on donations, and we want to explore new models that not only allow libraries to live and live longer, but also to create more value." Liu Chang said.
After leaving Beijing, Liu Chang has regarded Dali as his "second hometown.". When she first came to Dali, she was consuming Dali, enjoying the free and inclusive environment, rich local culture, and good mountains and waters; now, she began to think about how to create, inherit, and use new thinking to bring out the culture here.
The longer he traveled, the more Wen Lin missed his hometown. In the process of constantly returning to his hometown, he also had a new understanding of Dali.
"Dali is a utopia." In his view, Dali is not only the Dali of the locals, it has slowly become the Dali of many people. Some people come from big cities and regard Dali as the first stop from the city to the countryside, and there are foreigners who settle in Dali, where there are all kinds of ideas and cultures.
"People don't say who has more money than whom, they don't say who has more houses than anyone, and everyone in Dali is doing what they want to do in this life." Wen Lin said.
Wen Lin's wish is to open 100 such libraries in Yunnan, so that reading can reach farther afield. He joked: "It is better to buy more suites than to open an additional library." ”
(At the request of the interviewee, Liu Chang is a pseudonym)
(Editor: Qi Mengying Proofreader: Yan Yuxia)