An antiquarian bookstore, as the name suggests, refers to a store that mainly sells vintage books. In the eighties and nineties of the last century, second-hand book bookstores in Nanjing can be said to be flourishing, but now they are gradually declining, and there are few left. The representative of Nanjing Used Book Bookstore, an ancient book bookstore located in Yanggongjing, also symbolizes the reading feelings of old Nanjing people to a certain extent.
For book lovers, antique bookstores have to be visited. The Antiquarian Bookstore is the oldest surviving bookstore in Nanjing, which was formed in 1956 by the merger of 12 private antique and used bookstores in Nanjing. The ancient book bookstore originally mainly sold engraving, movable type, lead, stone, photocopies and other books of the past dynasties, and enjoyed a high reputation throughout the country. Although bookstores are not as popular as they used to be, there are still many university professors and experts from the Institute of Ancient Books who come to look for materials.
The bookstore has two floors, the first floor mainly displays new books, most of which are literary and historical books, all from Zhonghua Book Company, Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, Qilu Books and other ancient book publishing houses. In addition, the bookstore also sells tablets, reference books, etc., and there are not many sample books available for readers. One of the great features of antiquarian bookstores is the wide variety of books, where readers can find many books that are not commonly found in other bookstores, such as various comic books. The second floor is mainly engaged in used books, including line-bound ancient books, tablet rubbings, calligraphy and paintings, etc., in addition to a special book area, which has two kinds of special books and seven folds. Most of the special books are the stock books of the publishing house, and the types of books are diverse, the quality is uneven, and the overall book is average. Compared with the first floor, the books on the second floor of the bookstore are displayed chaotic and piled up randomly, making it inconvenient for readers to find them.
The antique bookstore is the most complete thread-bound bookstore in Nanjing, with a rich and complete collection of thread-bound books in the store, about more than 100,000 volumes, which are distributed on the first and second floors of the bookstore. The bookstore's thread-bound books are all classic books, such as the Four Great Classics, "Shuowen Jie Zi", "Chu Ci Ji Annotation", "Su Dongpo Ji" and so on. The bookstore has a "Gengyan Zhai Book Gallery" on the second floor, specializing in the sale of rare books, that is, the ancient books that have undergone strict proofreading and no misrepresentation, the lower limit of the era of such books is generally in the 60 years of Qianlong, and there are two treasures of the town store in the book gallery: the "Jiangning County Chronicles" and "Ganxi Manuscript" in the Wanli period.
The environment is a major shortcoming of the ancient bookstore, the bookstore environment is simple and simple, there are no reading places, and the reading experience is poor. The bookstore does not have many cultural and creative products, but the bookstore has a "Xin Gu Zhai" on the first floor, which is used to display celebrity calligraphy and paintings, antiques and miscellaneous items, and sell the four treasures of the study.
