For bookstore industry workers and senior bookworms, the brand Zhongshuge is no stranger. Chengdu is the first city in southwest China to open Zhongshuge Bookstore, and in early 2018, Zhongshuge Chengdu Store was selected as one of the top ten most beautiful bookstores in 2017 at the "Empowering Future Bookstore Bookstore Learning" conference.
The Chengdu store continues the exaggerated style of Zhongshuge, and the iconic subtitle wall of Zhongshuge is filled with elements with Sichuan opera masks and panda patterns. Behind the curtain wall, bamboo-shaped bookshelves with two ends wide and narrow in the middle stand upright, dotted around the corners. Deep in the space are double-layered bookshelves, and the upper level is designed in the style of a cloister, with several red brick walls intersecting each other, and bookshelves embedded in the walls. The reading area is close to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, opposite the scenic Jiaozi Park, but most of these reading seats require seating, and the bookstore provides drinks and snacks for guests, which are not cheap.
The lecture hall is located in the innermost part of the bookstore, with a squiggly staircase and a mirrored ceiling that widens the visual height, making it a place for the bookstore's events. Since its establishment, the bookstore has held lectures on topics such as "Women for Independence, Women for Entrepreneurship - Dialogue between Poland and Southwest China" and "The Back of Chinese People under Ancient Buildings".
One of the highlights of Zhongshuge is the children's reading area, which aims to create a "reading forest" for children with the theme concept of "plants". The walls are made up of red and green bookshelves and are designed in the shape of houses, pandas, windmills, etc., and the rest boardwalk is connected between giant mushroom decorations. In terms of soft furnishings, the bookstore tries to use shapes with no edges or fewer edges and corners, which prevents children from being injured to a certain extent. The children's area is dominated by picture books and storybooks, which are more suitable for children under the age of six. In addition, the children's area will also hold some reading activities from time to time, such as parent-child picture book reading classes, "reading marathons" and so on.
Compared with Fang Suo and Yanjiyou, Zhong Shuge, which is also an "Internet celebrity bookstore", has a small collection of books, totaling more than 60,000 volumes. Most of the books on the first floor of the bookstore are social sciences, including economics, law, religion, etc., and the corridor on the second floor gathers Chinese and foreign literature books, which are classified by different countries. The bookstore does not have too many books, and it is not easy to flip through them, which is regrettable.
Unlike most well-known bookstores, Zhongshuge does not rely on the production and sale of cultural and creative products, and there are very few cultural and creative products in bookstores, but this does not mean that guests who visit Zhongshuge will focus on "reading". On the contrary, every time Zhongshuge stores are born, it means that there is another hot store in China. In Zhongshuge, the quiet and comfortable environment is relatively rare.
