On March 3, next to the Jingfeng Railway Signal Station in the Ming City Wall Site Park in Dongcheng District, Beijing, Wenqinge Bookstore opened for business. Since its opening, the bookstore has organized interactive cultural projects such as monkeys, painting tents, art flower arranging, city wall sketching, and ancient building roots. A reporter from Beijing Youth Daily visited and found that opening a bookstore in the park is quietly becoming a cultural fashion. They are adapted to local conditions, some with the theme of Grand Canal culture, some to create a pastoral culture of cultivation and reading, and some into the Grand View Garden with the theme of the Red House as the element.

Wenyu River Park

Pastoral style + Xinhua Bookstore

Recently, a reporter from Beiqing News came to the Shunyi section of Wenyu River Park, the largest "green lung" in Beijing, and saw a cartoon-shaped bear statue holding a book and reading, looking at the pastoral wooden house style Xinhua Bookstore. The glass curtain wall inside the store blends the indoor and outdoor scenery, creating a treasure space. Readers sit on wooden chairs and read books, occasionally looking up to see the grass and trees sprouting, feeling the spring atmosphere.

Zhang Xiumei, general manager of Shunyi Xinhua Bookstore Co., Ltd., introduced that in 2022, the Wenyu River Pastoral Store will be carefully built, changing from rough to beautiful, building a "combination of fine wilderness" pastoral style that unifies people and the environment for readers. Today, the bookstore has been listed on the list of online celebrities in the Beijing reading space category. "Our business philosophy is to promote a more comprehensive integration of books and tourism, and to increase the diversification of business items such as cultural creativity, coffee, light meals, and intangible cultural heritage. We also continue to carry out product research and development, 'Little Bear Milk Tea', 'Wenyu River Sunrise' and so on are popular Internet celebrity products loved by readers. ”

Since its opening, relying on the "golden business card" of Wenyu River Park, the bookstore has carried out various online and offline reading salon activities such as "Wenyu River and Beijing Canal Culture" book club, "Love with Zhu Zhang" book club, and parent-child story club, so that the "city park" carries the power of reading and allows readers to experience the joy of idyllic slow life.

Zhang Xiumei also said that in 2023, the bookstore will carry out reading activities throughout the year, and plans to carry out more than 50 online and offline reading activities. It will also focus on creating outdoor travel scenes, through traditional cultural activities that reflect the elements of old Beijing, face-to-face meetings with local writers, cultural and creative products, and intangible cultural heritage product displays, etc., to provide readers with a local quality of life that attracts friends and gathers like each other.

Grand Canal Forest Park

Imitation Song architecture + Canal Academy

In the Tongzhou Grand Canal Forest Park, there is an antique imitation Song Dynasty building. Stone carvings brought from along the southern canal are used as courtyards and interior decorations, revealing the cultural heritage of the Grand Canal. This is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal Academy established in April 2021.

Canal Academy covers an area of nearly 1000,2000 square meters, and the first floor is a book sales area, with about <>,<> books; The second floor is a free reading area, which is also a branch of Tongzhou Library. In addition, the college also has a convention and exhibition space of more than <>,<> square meters, equipped with conference rooms, including a courtyard, which attracts artists to settle in the park and hold exhibitions for the public.

Sun Rui, director of Canal Academy, said that the college mainly sells cultural books with the theme of the Grand Canal, and will also undertake some national reading activities and new book releases held by the government. "Our activities include poetry sessions and readings – including original poetry sessions on the theme of canals and original poetry sessions for teenagers, which are very popular with live broadcasts." Sun Rui introduced that in the future, it will also do new books related to canal culture, including local writers, such as the ancient town of Caoyun and Zhangjiawan, and will also cooperate with some institutions and literati in the cultural circles - such as the Chinese Poetry Society and the School of History of Capital Normal University have established cooperation bases in the college, hoping to deepen the culture of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

It is worth mentioning that in Beijing Urban Green Heart Forest Park, across the road from the Grand Canal Forest Park, there is another bookstore - China Bookstore Green Heart Park Store. The bookstore's design style is also based on the theme of "Grand Canal Culture", and in the overall space design, the curved streamers printed with the full map of the Qing Dynasty Canal are used to create the geographical shape of the canal basin, and the "Luhe Supervision Map" is decorated with the grand scenery of water transportation, so that the "canal concept" "comes alive" in the indoor space. In line with the design theme, the bookstore also has a special display of books related to "Grand Canal Culture".

Luo Wei, the manager of the bookstore, told the Beiqing News reporter that the biggest difficulty facing the bookstore at present is that it is located in a remote location and there are relatively few tourists. Luo Wei said that in the future, she will operate the reading community well, including the Grand Canal lecture series, the China Bookstore Excellent Publishing Reading Club, the calligraphy lecture series and other activities, and strive to attract more customers with high-quality public reading activities.

Da

Red Mansion Elements + More Reading Club

From September 2021, the Grand View Garden reading club located in the Grand View Garden and with the theme of the Red Chamber as the element has been put into operation.

Daguanyuan Reading Club selected 6 well-known scenes from "Dream of Red Mansions", and divided the activity areas according to the format of the book club, namely: "Mushi Qianmeng" souvenir area, "Too illusory realm" cultural and creative area, "Tanchun Association" Chinese Academy Hall, "Miaoyu Fengcha" tea tasting area, "Xiangling Reading" reading area, "Peach Blossom Society" seal punching area, etc. The book club also hopes to show the change of the four seasons to readers who come to the reading space - when they come to the bookstore in different seasons, they will see the vitality of spring, the richness of summer, the layers of autumn, and the simplicity of winter.

Kui Jie, the manager of the book club, told the Beiqing News reporter that the book club is positioned as a "family reading space" to serve the surrounding community, covering young children, teenagers, intellectual mothers, silver-aged elderly people and people interested in traditional culture. At present, the book club has more than 6000,300 volumes of Chinese literature and more than 40 bound volumes of periodicals. It mainly includes four famous works, poetry and songs, <> solar terms, traditional culture and other cultural inheritance books, accounting for more than <>% of the total. In addition, there are books on quality life, art appreciation, mental health, youth literature, children's picture books and other aspects to meet the different reading needs of family members.

In addition to different versions of "Dream of Red Mansions", the red science books of experts and scholars such as Zhou Ruchang, Bai Xianyong, Ou Lijuan, Jiang Xun and other experts and scholars can also be found on this bookcase. We also lead readers to walk the Grand View Garden during the spring blossom season to feel the artistic conception of the ancient poems in "Dream of Red Mansions". Kui Jie introduced that the book club combined with the culture of the Red Mansion to design and develop a lot of high-quality cultural and creative works of the Red Mansion, such as jewelry, clothing, stationery, seals, etc., all of which have both the cultural heritage of the Red Mansion and popular fashion elements.

As for the future operation direction of the book club, Kui Jie said that since it is located in the Grand View Garden, it is necessary to gather readers and tourists to do various communication activities like the Jia Tanchun Poetry Club in "Dream of Red Mansions", rather than simply treating it as an individual reading space. In the future, bookstores will take readers to walk the Grand View Garden with "Dream of Red Mansions" and work immersive experience activities such as poetry recitation, intangible inheritance, art photography, and camellia fragrance to attract more readers.

visit

The special bookstore in Beijing has broken the game

What is the business status of physical bookstores in Beijing and what are the new plans? Recently, the "Spring of Physical Bookstores" media interview group visited eight bookstores in Miyun, Shunyi, Chaoyang, Haidian, Dongcheng and Xicheng to feel their unique road to breakthrough.

Music and dance drainage

Located in the Blue Mountain Cultural Park in Miyun District, Lewu Reading is a diversified reading place. On the morning of March 3, when the reporter walked into the bookstore, Pan Xiaolong, the owner of the bookstore, was rehearsing with six young dancers. Amid the beautiful sound of the guzheng, Pan Xiaolong recited the poems of the Miyun poet Zheng Congzhou, and the actors danced according to the artistic conception of the poems.

This is not the first time Pan Xiaolong has used poetry to create dance. In recent years, he has shared picture books and classic children's novels on online social platforms every night, creating the brand of "Music, Dance and Music Reading Live Room". Pan Xiaolong selected classic picture books suitable for children such as "Courage" and "Stone Soup" and the ancient poem "When is the Bright Moon" to create more than ten musical and dance dramas, making reading interesting, three-dimensional, and more direct to the heart.

"Customized" by age group

Located in Kingdee Industrial Park in Shunyi District, Fascinating Planet Book Island has become a popular check-in place in Beijing. It is a "book island" with the theme of space and planets, covering an area of 870 square meters. The bookstore carefully designed the lunar exploration and space travel reading space, closely following the theme of space and planets.

In order to create an immersive reading experience, Julie, the manager of Fascination Planet Book Island, divided the bookstore into a car science theme house, a Harry Potter theme house and a natural science reading house according to the reading age of children.

It is reported that readers in urban areas such as Haidian, Xicheng, and Chaoyang will drive dozens of kilometers here on weekends to enjoy a moment of tranquility and the pleasure of reading. "I will probably stay in this bookstore for the next 20 years, and slowly make this place a place that brings good childhood memories to children."

Installation art aid

The bookstore on the other side of the Peony Science and Technology Park in Haidian District is making a new attempt: using installation art to tell the story of books. "Before the movie 'Instantaneous Universe' won the Oscar, we were selling science fiction novels like 'Batman's Parallel Universe'. The installation in front of me was actually designed to better sell Argentine writer Borgesco's fantasy novel The Garden with Diverging Paths. At the same time, I put "Parallel Universe" here. Such installations arouse the curiosity of the reader. Zhao Yuechao, the manager of the bookstore on the other side, introduced to reporters.

In Zhao Yuechao's view, physical bookstores are actually rooted readers. As a bookstore operator, you must find ways to tell the stories in the book thoroughly and attract readers in various ways.

point of view

Bookstore opens into the park Three aesthetics combined

He Qicong, associate professor of the Capital Institute of Cultural Innovation and Cultural Communication Engineering of Beijing Normal University, who has been engaged in the research of physical bookstores for a long time, believes that the opening of bookstores into the park is inseparable from Beijing's long-standing physical bookstore encouragement and support policies, allowing more creative bookstores, design bookstores, and Internet celebrity bookstores to emerge around the residents of the capital, which also injects benign development momentum into the construction of national cultural centers.

"In terms of aesthetic value, in the past, bookstores may have paid more attention to the creative design and composite functions of the internal space, while the Park Bookstore has gone a step further, implanting an elegant and comfortable composite cultural space into a poetic park green space, expanding the aesthetics of the internal space to the external natural world." He Qicong believes that in addition to leisure and exercise, citizens can walk into the hall of books, read good books in beautiful literature, sip coffee tea, enjoy the beautiful scenery of the four o'clock, and complete the four beautiful things in life at the same time, which is equivalent to combining spiritual aesthetics, life aesthetics and health aesthetics.

In her view, physical bookstores and urban parks are both "luxuries" of modern cities and indispensable physical landmarks in the ideal urban living environment. The former is the spirit of the city, the soul of civilization, and an important cultural symbol of urban civilization; The latter is the city's natural resources and healthy space, providing an ecologically sustainable "green lung" for urban development. Although the two are completely different, they are the most beautiful memory fragments in the DNA of urban civilization.

This group of text/reporter Zhang Enjie

Photo by reporter Li Na

Coordinator/Liu Jianghua