At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, the bookstore in the business district "meets" opens

At the end of the year and the beginning of the year, a number of Internet celebrity brand bookstores gathered in major shopping malls in Beijing. On December 31, 2023, Wansheng Bookstore, which focuses on academic and ideological books, moved to Wudaokou Shopping Center in Haidian District and reopened, on January 5, PAGEONE Bookstore with the theme of vinyl settled in Beichenhui, the core commercial complex located in the second phase of the National Convention Center on Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, and Fangsuo Bookstore, a brand bookstore in Guangzhou, set off for the north and will open in Wukesong Wanda Plaza in Haidian District on January 20. The news of the successive opening of bookstores in three business districts has undoubtedly injected a strong warm current into the construction of scholarly Beijing in the cold winter.

PAGEONE北辰荟店

The business district and the bookstore go in both directions

On the morning of January 5th, PAGEONE Bookstore Beichenhui Vinyl Theme Store opened. Walking into this bookstore, it is like being in a sea of vinyl music: warm and natural classical vinyl music rings in your ears, a whole wall of vinyl records and various styles of vinyl record players are greeted in front of your eyes, operas, symphonies, chamber music, orchestral music, pop music and other records are neatly stacked on the shelves, as well as records of works from the three representative periods of music development in the history of Renaissance, Baroque and the Middle Ages, with a total of more than 2,000 records - Bach, Chopin, The tunes of world-class musicians such as Schubert bring people's minds to that era of freedom and romance in the circle of the record.

It is understood that this is PAGEONE's sixth store in Beijing. With a total area of more than 400 square meters, the bookstore is divided into one floor, one and a half floors and two floors, with multi-functional spaces such as vinyl singing area, reading area, coffee area, activity area, and exhibition area. Each space has a unique design ingenuity, "Here, we hope that everyone can revisit a certain memory along the direction of words or vinyl lines, or find the answer to life." Chen Peng, general manager of PAGEONE Bookstore, said.

Chen Peng also said that on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of PAGEONE, he hopes to increase the space for readers and friends to concentrate on reading and taking, thinking and imagining. The concept gradually became clear and finally materialized, and a new store where books and vinyl were co-founded, PAGEONE Beichenhui Vinyl Theme Store, was born.

Adjacent to the vinyl area is the unique art books and original English books display area of PAGEONE Bookstore. Walking up the narrow staircase to the right is a half-story space with strange themes of nature books and colorful children's books, and to the left is the café area on the second floor. The table facing the bar displays all kinds of exquisite and interesting cultural creations, and the seats in the lounge area are surrounded by comic books, social science books, lifestyle books, and cute plush dolls.

Chen Peng said that when the Beichenhui project attracted investment, it wanted to introduce a bookstore to enhance the cultural taste of the mall. Therefore, they screened the bookstore brands that were more in line with the positioning of the mall, and finally selected the PAGEONE brand, and attracted PAGEONE bookstores to settle in at a very favorable rental price.

"It's a two-way street. As a bookstore, I also prefer the business district of Beichenhui, where there are Olympic Park and the National Convention Center, where various sports and fitness activities and high-end conferences and forums are held, and international exchanges are more active. Chen Peng also introduced that there are also residential buildings and scientific research institutes in the Olympic Village around the business district, where many senior intellectuals live and they have the pursuit of cultural taste and quality of life - which is exactly in line with the positioning of the customer group of vinyl theme bookstores, and there will be a lot of room and potential for development.

All Saints Book Garden

It was the first time in 30 years since its establishment that it entered the mall

On the last day of 2023, Halloween Book Garden, the spiritual home of generations of readers, reopened on the third floor of Wudaokou Shopping Center in Haidian District – the first time in the 30-year history of Wansheng Book Garden.

On the evening of January 5, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily saw in the newly opened Wansheng Book Garden that there were many names such as Western philosophy, masters of Western thought, anthropology, sociology, Chinese legal history, Dunhuang, archaeology, Chinese studies, Confucianism, Confucius and Mencius, Lao Zhuang, Chinese academic thought, etc. These signs are eye-catching and instantly get readers straight to the point—they're either leaning over the shelves to choose a book, or they're looking down and writing down a bibliography. "Chinese Translation of Academic Classics", "Everyone's Little Books", "Classics and Explanations" and other series of books are displayed on special shelves.

On the same day on January 5, a reporter from Beiqing Daily met Li Yuji, an associate professor at the School of Drama, Film and Television of Communication University of China, in the Wansheng Book Garden. Professor Li is taking several of his students here to buy reference books for academic essay writing. They purchased 19 books, including "Cyborg Anthropology: A Global Research Review and Contemporary Paradigm Shift", "Hegel in the Brain", and "A History of Medieval Sensory Culture".

Talking about his impression of the Wansheng Book Garden, Li Yu said that when he was a student at Peking University, he often frequented the Wansheng Book Garden, where there was a rich variety of academic books on humanities and social sciences, and he would never return empty-handed every time he went shopping.

The relocation of Halloween Book Garden from Chengfu Street, which connects the East Gate of Peking University and the West Gate of Tsinghua University, to the Wudaokou Shopping Center has been controversial online. After all, the shopping mall environment is noisy, and Halloween Book Garden is a place where readers can read quietly and think independently.

Previously, Liu Suli, the founder of Wansheng Book Garden, had explained to the Publisher, "I had concerns about this location at first. But after more than half a year of observation and thinking, I gradually settled on this place. "It will be a Halloween, it can only be a Halloween. ”

As a reader, Li Yujian does not think that the noisy shopping environment of Wansheng Book Garden in Wudaokou Shopping Center is contrary to the atmosphere of calm thinking pursued by academic reading. For him, as soon as he enters the bookstore, his mind is calm and focused, and the physical space seems to disappear. Moreover, academic reading and thinking is inherently intense and intense, and the brain processes in reading and checking books are comparable to the Big Bang. "It doesn't matter where the physical bookstore opens, the important thing is that the physical bookstore still exists. ”

Fangsuo Bookstore's first store in Beijing

Building a "Western Beijing Cultural Life Center"

During the interview, a reporter from Beiqing Daily also learned that the first store of Guangzhou Brand Fangsuo Bookstore in Beijing will open in Wukesong Wanda Plaza in Haidian District on January 20. Fang is committed to the planning and operation of public cultural spaces, and is committed to the planning and promotion of multicultural and art forms. In 2011, the first "Fangsuo" opened in Guangzhou. Subsequently, it set up directly-operated stores in Chengdu, Chongqing, Qingdao, Xi'an, Sanya and Shenzhen, and has won many awards at home and abroad, such as "AD is one of the 15 most beautiful bookstores in the world" and "Best Bookstore in Asia at the London Book Fair International Book Industry Excellence Awards".

Fang said that the first store in Beijing will be positioned to build a "Jingxi Cultural Life Center", with an operating area of 2,500 square meters, with books as the core of reading life, integrating design and cultural creativity, fashion clothing, parent-child reading growth and other diversified formats, through rich art and cultural activities, based on the rich cultural soil of Haidian, to inject new vitality into the city's spiritual life.

Explanation

Where is the "drunkard's meaning" of opening a bookstore in the business district?

He Qicong, associate professor of the Capital Institute of Cultural Innovation and Cultural Communication Engineering of Beijing Normal University, believes that bookstores in the business district are a typical integration format for Beijing to build an international consumption center city.

According to He Qicong's analysis, the comprehensive cultural space represented by physical bookstores is increasingly favored by urban business districts, mainly because of the strong drainage ability of cultural consumption. In particular, large brand bookstores, due to their rich drainage experience and operational capabilities, their flagship stores in large business districts are often large enough, the selection of products is good enough, and the space design and appearance and internal display are both artistic and visible, which can easily become Internet celebrity check-in places, effectively attract consumers and increase the stay time, and ultimately achieve the purpose of promoting the "symbiotic" consumption growth of other formats in the business district.

He Qicong introduced that the high-quality customer flow attracted by a brand bookstore every year is equivalent to the communication effect that can only be achieved by high advertising funds, which is a public relations experience that is increasingly recognized by the business circle. It is reported that Beijing SKP, the single department store with the highest turnover in China, is one of the few large shopping malls in China with its own bookstore - "Beijing SKPRDV Bookstore". The reason why SKP is willing to dedicate every inch of space to the mall to build its own bookstore, rather than renting it to luxury brands for profit, is because the management believes that the bookstore provides an important added value to enhance the cultural quality and shopping experience of the mall. The introduction of PAGEONE by Beichen Hui and the introduction of Halloween Book Garden by Wudaokou Shopping Center are all here.

At the same time, He Qicong also pointed out that the study found that after the expiration of the first phase of cooperation, bookstores in some business districts encountered the "difficulty" of canceling the original rent concession or being forced to relocate to a corner location. Some bookstores in business districts have just cultivated a group of loyal readers, but they are crushed by these harsh renewal conditions. If excellent bookstores are always forced to move out, it will not only hurt the bookstore side in the future, but also the confidence in the brand and cooperation in the business district will also cause invisible harm. In her opinion, in addition to its own drainage and residency value, bookstores in the business district should try more to communicate and interact with the commercial body in art and space, give full play to the advantages of their own cultural attributes, and become an irreplaceable space that grows with the commercial body. This is the future of bookstores in the business district, and it is also the future pattern that the top business district should have.

This group of articles and photos / reporter Zhang Enjie

Co-ordinator/Liu Jianghua

(Beijing Youth Daily)