Guangzhou Travel Notes | When you come to Guangzhou, you should visit these bookstores

Si Si’s thoughts

Where I live, there must be three necessary conditions:

Food is the most important part of my life and cannot be left out. Whether it's a roadside stall, takeout, or restaurant, in short you have to have delicious food to have a life. Then, as a girl addicted to the Internet, WiFi makes me happier . Finally, there is a vegetable market. Whether I am in a good mood or not, I like to visit the vegetable market. The noise and hustle and bustle here make peoplefeel energeticto live.

Recently, I want to add another one. I hope that the city where I live has a bookstore that is small enough to place a broken heart and big enough to contain your desire for the world.

I spent a week finding 7 of my favorite independent bookstores.

I believe that humans are social animals and bookstores are a place for solitude.

1200bookshop: The city never closes

Keywords: can’t sleep/interesting/Guangzhou nightlife

29-year-old Liu Erxi walked 1,200 kilometers in Taiwan in 51 days. After returning, he opened a non-closing bookstore called 1200. He said: There is no wifi here, give your time back to reading.

From then on, the nightlife in Guangzhou was the taste of shrimp and crab porridge and the taste of bookstores.

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There is a long staircase at 1200 Sports East

Sitting on the edge of the stairs reading a book is not thrilling.

This is the largest 1200 space I have ever been to.

Besides reading, what I love most is the utensils for serving milk tea here

It’s shiny and suitable for a fairy like me.

On 1200 Bookstore Sports East Store

Founded: 2014

Tag: 24-hour bookstore

Main books: bestsellers/travel/life

Address: No. 27 Tiyu East Road (next to the bus stop)

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1200 in the backstreet of CITIC is like hiding in the corner of a maze

That day, I followed the navigation guide and walked straight, turning left and right and making several turns.

Finally, I found it by feeling without using navigation.

That day, I bought a book here in a blind selection

It read, "We will destroy what we love"

There are no apron bosses in the late night cafeteria here

But late-night dumplings are a master of gourmet food

1200 Bookstore CITIC Back Street Store

Address: Level 3, BM Floor, Houjie, CITIC Plaza, No. 233 Tianhe North Road

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The price of 1200 in Sports North is not large, and there are not many books to choose from.

The long ladders/old boxes/white-painted bricks here can be used as bookshelves.

Visited at night and asked for an iced mocha,

Sit and listen to the whispers in the bookstore.

I stayed here until 1 o'clock in the morning,

After reading Two Billion Light Years of Loneliness,

Wrote reading notes and "people hiding in bookstores in the early morning"

On 1200 Bookstore Tianhe North Store

Address: No. 116, Floor 1, Wokai Street, No. 460 Tianhe North Road

There is not much time or place to be alone in life. If you come to Guangzhou, you might as well come to 1200 Bookstore. It is best to visit at night, maybe the lights are not bright, but it is enough to light yourself up.

Shude Life Museum: Selling a better life

Keywords: food, clothing, housing and transportation/emotions/good life

Sometimes, you may fall in love with a bookstore just because

There is a sentence about your mood written on the wall of the bookstore

Here, I walked past bookshelves one after another

I saw “it’s about food, clothing, housing and transportation”

I also saw choices about a better life

What do you mean by beauty? What you see is beauty

Maybe I finished reading a book that I had put aside for a long time.

Maybe I learned a new skill,

Maybe I slept until I woke up naturally,

Perhaps in Shude, Green Gables said:

Live a good life, because there is always someone thinking about you

Shude Life Museum

Founded: 2017 (shuter books)

Tag: A bookstore with text Easter eggs even in the bathroom

Main books: Design/Life/Literature

Address: No. 8, TIT Creative Yuan Creative Avenue, No. 297 Xingang Middle Road

This may be the bookstore with the largest number of design books that I have seen in Guangzhou so far. I said that bookstores are suitable for solitude, but Shude’s bookstore is suitable for best friends to go together, whether it is making handmade soaps, wood crafts, or nesting on a comfortable sofa, it is also very beautiful if we don’t talk.

When you come to Shude, don’t forget to look for the text Easter eggs hidden in the corners.

Borges: Hearing a Persistence

Keywords: classic/wasted time/power

Entering Borges, I was filled with inferiority complex;

Because the bookshelves here are filled with my ignorance of the world.

Author names in order from A to Z

I don’t know much about most of them

At 5pm I walked into Borges,

The store is not big, only two bays.

Maybe I was born lucky and happened to meet the live version of Literary Live

For an hour, Mia slowly said:

60-year-old Henry James’s battle with himself and writing

Borges is small and I still love it.

The greatest expectation for a bookstore,

There is nothing better than "wasting time" here and not knowing it.

Borges Bookstore

Founded: 1994

Tag: the spiritual corner of literati

Main books: Western literature/philosophy

Address: 1st Floor, No. 7, Changxing Street, Yuexiu District

This purely literary bookstore has moved more than ten times since the year I was born, but it still stands in a corner of Guangzhou. His master Chen Tong said, Persistence is easier than giving up. If you give up, you have to face everyone's questions. In order to avoid answering why, it is better to persist.

PS: Borges has a literary live broadcast every month on January 5/10/15/25/30 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm. You can listen to it at the bookstore or on the Lizhi FM 1019852 channel.

Fang Suo: This is a bookstore for adults

Keywords: collection/foreign edition book/catering

Whenever people mention Fang Suo, they will remember that he was in Taikoo Hui.

It will be remembered that he and Hermes were neighbors.

While I was in Fangsuo, I couldn't help but think of Xinhua Bookstore,

The difference is that no one will be sitting on the floor here.

Fangsuo is a high-end knowledge supermarket with complete shelves.

He may know better than the people in Guangzhou what books Guangzhou wants.

There is a whole shelf of foreign books and a large corner of art books.

Just like when I was a child, I thought that Xinhua Bookstore had all kinds of books

It’s not really like having everything,

It’s just because the books you want to read happen to be available here.

It was good when I was a child, and it is also good when I grow up.

Xinhua Bookstore is very good, and Fangsuo is also very good.

Fang Suo

Founded: 2011

Tag: bookstores that are better at choosing books than you are

Main books: art design/foreign books/best-sellers

Address: Floor B1, Taikoo Hui, No. 282 Tianhe Road

This is the bookstore with the most foreign-published books that I have seen in Guangzhou so far. At the same time, there are a lot of art books here, and the quality of the books is also very good.

If you want to study, you don't have to come to Fangsuo, it's too noisy here. If you want to buy books, please come to Fangsuo, because we have everything here.

UN United Bookstore: a down-to-earth independent bookstore

Keywords: Quietness amidst the bustle/Garden/Rich

As an independent bookstore, United Bookstore is definitely the most down-to-earth.

A six-story brick-red retro building,

Whether it is 2009 or 2018,

They are all eye-catching presence on the streets of Beijing.

If you come to United Bookstore on the weekend,

People all over the street will tell you that the stroke of crowding is seventeen.

As well as gifts, stationery, and animation peripherals?

As a Gacha African,

When I saw the gashapon machine on the fifth floor, I couldn’t control my hands at all

As for me, who was very poor, I brought two new eighties back home...

UN United Bookstore

Opening date: 2009

Tag: down-to-earth independent bookstore

Main books: bestsellers/literature/children’s books

Address: No. 314, Beijing Road, Yuexiu District

It is said that there are a lot of Hong Kong and Taiwan books here, but because my heart was completely attracted by the gashapon on the fifth floor, I didn’t read it carefully. Also, I think this is

Read thousands of books, travel thousands of miles, and get along with yourself

My biggest expectation for a bookstore is to "waste time" here without realizing it. I remember one summer in Qingdao, I accidentally broke into a bookstore and read a book there comfortably. So far, my memory of Qingdao is seafood and not bookstores.

I have been in Guangzhou for a year. I have had morning tea, visited the flower market, rented a house, and walked into the winding alleys, but I have never visited any bookstores in this city.

So I spent a week walking into more than ten bookstores. Finally, here I write down 5 of my favorite independent bookstores. Of course, there are still many bookstores that we haven’t arrived yet. Let’s continue exploring when we return to Guangzhou after our trip.

Reading and traveling are both ways to see the world, because both allow you to walk independently in the world and have contact and dialogue with different lives. It's good to be alive.