33 years of lighting up a book dream
From renting a small window for 2,000 yuan, he started to make leather books, Sannong books and other features. Today, this county-level bookstore has more than 50,000 books.
Hebei Xinji Market is located 65 kilometers east of Shijiazhuang City and 240 kilometers away from the capital Beijing.
There is a bookstore in this county-level city. Since its opening in 1989, it has nurtured three or four generations of local people. This is the "Science and Technology Bookstore" located in "Hebei Yiji" in Xinji City. The store advocate Jixiang is 75 years old. I have been with this bookstore for 33 years.
"I want to open a bookstore"
In 1947, Zhang Jixiang was born in a peasant family in Xinji.
When Zhang Jixiang was five or six years old, a neighbor who came back from Beijing brought back several novel comic strips, small books, vivid pictures, and concise words. He was deeply attracted by the stories one by one. These books became his dream, and he often wondered how he could go to the neighbor's house and read them again.
The seeds of love for books are planted early, and they take root and sprout as soon as they go to school.
In a Chinese class, the teacher wrote "My ideal" in the composition, and Zhang Jixiang's composition was "I want to open a bookstore".
The teacher once took this composition as a model essay and read it to the whole class. The class applauded, but no one said it was a fool's dream.
The teacher's firm and hopeful eyes gave Zhang Jixiang confidence. He felt that I must open a bookstore, and I can definitely open a bookstore.
After graduating from middle school, Zhang Jixiang, who has always been among the best in grades, was sent to Zhengding Normal University, and later joined Xinji Literary Federation.
During school, he never missed any bookstore: near the school reading room, small bookstores in the surrounding area, and as far away as various bookstores in Shijiazhuang. - In the student days, the seeds of busy books have been planted.
Planted the first somersault
In 1988, the state issued a business license to a private bookstore, and Zhang Jixiang's dream could finally be realized.
He started his business without hesitation.
In 1989, he took out his savings of 2,000 yuan and rented a small window in the cultural center. In this small space, Zhang Jixiang hung magazines such as "Reader" and "Youth Digest" on the wall, and the bookstore dream began.
Although the door face is small, there are many readers. In the early days of reform and opening up, people were full of thirst for culture.
But looking at the whole book market, it is very depressed. There is no dictionary, and even a copy of "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty" cannot be bought. The thin magazines and popular and brisk books in Zhang Jixiang's bookstore just fill people's extreme spiritual emptiness.
The small bookstore was booming, but it didn't last long. The next year, the Cultural Center took back the site.
Zhang Jixiang's bookstore was moved to an aluminum alloy book booth less than 10 square meters, named "Educational Bookstore".
The small book pavilion opens to the street. There is a short sunshade on the whole side of the glass window. On the sunshade, it is written in red: "The shop has many new books, and it is open in the morning and evening." The glass window is densely packed. colorful books.
In 1993, the bookstore moved to the "Hebei Yiji" store in the bazaar and changed its name to "Science and Technology Bookstore", which is still in use today.
It's not easy to find a store, and it's even harder to get books.
Supply is the first element of bookstore operation.
In the early 1990s, in order to get first-hand goods, Zhang Jixiang began to try to import books directly from the publishing house.
Do everything possible to collect more than 2,000 yuan and buy back more than 500 novels "Money, Crazy Trapped Beast".
However, it was that time he entered the book that he could hardly stand up and tasted the sour fruit of the bookstore.
"Money, Crazy Trapped Beast" is a documentary work by Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House.
At that time, the county was preparing to hold a large-scale temple fair once a year. He once boasted to his lover that the batch of books would be sold out in one temple fair.
As a result, those heavy books hit him hard.
Books, sold a poor few copies.
The real gold and silver of Bai Huahua ended bleakly with a "failure".
Will the bookstore continue to open, or will it close?
In the face of heavy failure, when he hesitated, his lover stood by him firmly.
In the repeated grinding and polishing, the bookstore slowly became formal, one store became two, and two stores were expanded into three stores.
The family runs around every day, leaving early and returning late, and they are very busy.
That year, Zhang Jixiang wrote a pair of Spring Festival couplets to record the situation at that time, "Busy busy, busy in the morning and busy in the evening, busy with music in silent years; tired and tired, tired today, and sweet in delicious shops."
Unpopular services find business opportunities
Although Xinji City is a county-level city with a population of only more than 600,000, it is well-known as the capital of leather and leather clothing throughout the country. The leather industry was famous as early as the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
With the development of the times, leather products need to update technology, improve quality and transform, but in this small county, everyone is accustomed to working with their heads down, and they often have nothing to do when they encounter technical problems.
In the continuous investigation and research, Zhang Jixiang gradually realized that Xinji needs leather technology and leather books.
However, there were few leather books published in that era, and the local Xinhua Bookstore hardly had any.
After all, leather books are an unpopular product with strong professionalism and narrow audience. Publishers are afraid that the books will not be sold after they are published.
Occasionally, there are publishing houses, and there are several types from this company and several types from that company. It is very difficult to collect them.
So Zhang Jixiang went to Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital, to Beijing trade fairs, and to publishing houses in various places.
At that time, there was only one bus from Xinji to Beijing. It was always a journey from about 11:00 at night to 5:00 in the morning. There were few seats on the bus, but there were many people.
On the return journey, Zhang Jixiang always brings back bags of books, hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Opening a bookstore is not only mental work, but also physical work.
Zhang Jixiang's diary records that in 2001, he made 21 trips to and from Beijing for book shopping, each trip for three or four days.
During the journey of Taoshu, the 7,500 yuan in cash he had worked so hard to accumulate was stolen, and his newly bought mobile phone was stolen...
Through solid efforts, Zhang Jixiang gradually established close ties with leather-related units and individuals across the country, and collected all kinds of leather books and periodicals from all over the country.
In the science and technology bookstore, there are special counters for leather books and periodicals, and the varieties are often maintained at nearly 100, and there are more than 2,000 clothing books.
The content ranges from leather production and processing to leather clothing sales, including material selection, dyeing and finishing, tailoring, design, push plate, shaping, ironing, repairing, sales, and service. You can find various links and different versions. books.
During a period of time, the store's wide variety of leather books, many editions, and rich contents were unique in the country. Even leather books that have been published for many years and out-of-print books that are hard to find in the market can also be found here.
For example, the book "Leather Chemicals" alone has editions from several publishers, with a complete range.
Clothing playing board and pushing board is a key step in the production of leather clothing. If you can keep up with it, the leather clothing will be sold well and make a lot of money.
The Science and Technology Bookstore brings together books from all over the country—China Textile Publishing House, Shanghai Culture Publishing House, Shanghai Science and Technology Publishing House, and Liaoning Science and Technology Publishing House.
The Shanghai Culture Publishing House's "Complete Edition of Advanced Clothing Collar/Sleeve Patterning Technology" sold hundreds of copies within a year.
The bookstore has participated in the annual Leather Expo in Xinji Market for many times. Although it is a small booth with a remote location and poor decoration, it is still very popular. 's favorite.
Yang characteristics catch the unpopular, and the practice of serving the economy has been successful.
"I will enter the book that others dare not enter, I will enter the book that others do not want to enter, I will enter the book that others can't enter, and the book that others lose money will enter." Zhang Jixiang said.
Now, this technology bookstore has a business area of 800 square meters, more than 50,000 kinds of books, and more than 200 bookshelves display varieties, covering all aspects of the local rural economy and life, and the general county-level Xinhua Bookstore requires book varieties: 2000 species.
In February 2004, the shopping mall belonging to "Flying Shoes", a key enterprise in Xinji Market leased by Zhang Jixiang, suddenly declared bankruptcy, and the shopping mall held a public auction.
Zhang Jixiang resolutely participated in the auction, and finally won the highest price - less than one million yuan.
Since then, Xinji City Science and Technology Bookstore has ended the history of renting a store for many years, and has a real store of its own.
Due to the good location of the bookstore and the strong customer flow, many people came to the door and proposed to lease or joint venture.
If you rent out the floor, the easy rent is far higher than the tiny profit from selling the book.
But in the end, Zhang Jixiang chose to stick to the book business and serve Sannong.
Zhang Jixiang said: "I am the son of a peasant...Reading is too important for the peasants...One more bookstore in the city means one less prison."
33 Years Condensed into "Thirty Years of My Bookstore"
From 1989 to 2022, the "Technology Bookstore" has gone through 33 years. Zhang Jixiang has reached the age of seventy and eighteen. The bookstore is slowly handed over to his daughter and son-in-law to manage.
But Zhang Jixiang still occasionally goes to bookstores.
He was too familiar with this place. He remembered clearly which shelf and floor each book was on. He had worked hard to find every book from all over the world, book by book.
Every inch of the bookstore, every bookshelf, is the result of painstaking efforts over time.
The frequent readers here are all familiar, and some can even be called by name.
After years of struggle, the "Science and Technology Bookstore" has gradually become a cultural landmark of this county-level city.
As time goes by, the road to brick-and-mortar bookstores has become more and more difficult, and many bookstores have gone out of business or closed down. However, the "tech bookstore" still has a light on.
Under the suggestion of Zhang Jixiang's son-in-law Wang Xinfeng, the online store of "Technology Bookstore" has also been opened, and it can sell about 10 orders per day.
Zhang Jixiang believes that, as an old store that has been open for more than 30 years, the persistence of the technology bookstore is also the epitome of the persistence of thousands of brick-and-mortar bookstores.
In recent years, Zhang Jixiang took "Rural Book Distribution" as the subject, and successively wrote and published "What Kind of Books Are Needed in Rural Areas?"
” and other 60 series of articles about farmers’ reading books, sharing their business philosophy and methods with readers.
Today, these articles have been compiled into the manuscript of "Thirty Years of My Bookstore", more than 70 articles with a total of more than 300,000 words, recording the thoughts and thoughts of the past 30 years.
In the Spring Festival of 2022, Zhang Jixiang, who is already in his old age, wrote a bookstore manager's couplet full of passion, recalling the experience of "books are not old, Tao Qingyi is 30 years old", and prayed that "the bookstore will not collapse, and the fire will be passed on." Salary five to find a building."
As for his 33-year road to opening a bookstore, Zhang Jixiang summed it up as "worry and joy" and "no complaints and no regrets".
Text / Intern Li Zhengyang, reporter Zhang Enjie
Coordinator/Liu Jianghua