Back from the brink

Songyang was the hometown of the great Song Dynasty (960-1279) woman poet Zhang Yuniang, and it is on poetry that Qian wants to focus in Chenjiapu. He plans to eventually build a poetry museum and a poetry art museum. In summer, members of the Summer Rain Poetry Society at Fudan University in Shanghai plan to find inspiration here, as do student writers from Nanjing University.

In 2008 when bookshops in China seemed to face a bleak future, Qian Xiaohua spent one month in Bishan village thinking about the future of Librairie Avant-Garde. It was in the countryside that he saw a promising future, he says. In April 2016 the Party secretary of Songyang county, Wang Jun, visited Bishan Bookstore and met Qian, asking him to build a bookshop in Songyang.

After Chenjiapu, two more Librairie Avant-Garde bookstores being built in rural areas will open this year, including one in Shaxi ancient town, Yunnan province, a community for the Bai ethnic group. Over the next five years a total of 10 more such bookstore programs are planned for ethnic groups around China.