‘People who really love books will come’: poet opens bookstore in mountainous village in China to provide space for locals to read and children to study
- A bookstore in the middle of nowhere built in the shape of the number seven and containing 7,000 books has caught attention online in mainland China
- The owner is a self-styled poet who spent US$116,000 building the store and says he wants to improve local villagers’ access to literature
A man in China who spent 800,000 yuan (US$116,000) building a bookshop in a remote village on top of a mountain has captivated mainland social media after a video of the store was posted online.
Milestone Bookstore is located in a rural area of Zhejiang province in eastern China, surrounded by farmland and woodland atop a mountain, Dami Video reported.
The bookstore is built in the shape of the number seven and has a collection of 7,000 mostly literary books.
The owner Jiang Libo, 57, is a self-styled poet who spent his money building the store over the past three years. He hopes to offer the local villagers, especially children, improved book access.
“Before my bookshop was built, the closest bookshop or library to this village was in a town about 30km away,” Jiang said.
“I found fewer and fewer people read books, and bookstores generally are struggling. However, I acted in contravention of this by opening a bookstore in a place with very few readers,” he said.
“My thought is: when villagers are idle, or kids are on holiday, they can come to read books. Isn’t that wonderful?”