Mourning Loss of a Beijing Bookstore

The Bookworm was a wonderful place to learn more about China in English

Today came sad news from Beijing -- The Bookworm is closing next Monday, November 11. For many expats in the Chinese capital go there to not only find books, but also meet people, have a drink, have lunch, hang out, and write their memoirs (I know at least one journalist did!).

For me it was a great place to listen to all kinds of speakers talk about China, and they were all pretty frank about the politics, the economy, social and environmental issues. But they were also very excited about what they were discovering.

Paleontologist Xu Xing talked about his field work

I remember paleontologist Xu Xing talking about discovering dinosaurs in Liaoning province and how there are so many dinosaurs yet to be unearthed and what they can tell us about prehistoric life in what is geographically China now.

One year I interviewed Howard Goldblatt, who through his winding career that started off in the US Army led to him studying Chinese in Taiwan and had a knack for learning the language so much so that he became a translator.

And listening to him talk about what it's like to translate a novel, and in particular Chinese -- you have to really understand what the author meant to say in the passage to be able to convey that in a similar writing style but in English.

He translated Wolf Totem, a semi-autobiographical novel by Jiang Rong, that talks about young people being sent down to remote Inner Mongolia and learning the ways of the nomadic people there and how wolves are critical to the ecosystem.

Academic Howard Goldblatt on the intricacies of translation

The Bookworm held the Literary Festival every year and there were always interesting authors coming through, or people who live in Beijing but I didn't know about. I always tried to catch as many of these as I could to get different perspectives on things.

Sadly the bookstore and unofficial community centre is closing down because it is an "illegal structure".

General manager David Cantaloupo explained The Bookworm was originally started on Sanlitun Beilu in 2002 and then moved to Courtyard 4 in Sanlitun, diagonally opposite Sanlitun Village.

"[When] they started to privatize state-run enterprises 20 years ago, regulations were looser then," he says. "[The bookshop was built] on a pump room. It doesn't have an address. It's [built on] a structure that was never [transformed] into things that they can rent out. [It is an illegal structure]. We've been paying rent here for a long time.

Many authors came to the Literary Festival every year

"[The government] are trying to clean up Beijing. City planners are trying to get things in order. Whether there's anything else behind it, it is unclear to us," Cantalupo said.

In a statement that was disseminated this afternoon, the bookstore thanked everyone for their support and hoped to keep The Bookworm going.

"While we attempt to reorganize and find a new location, we wish to say what an honor and a pleasure it has been to have played a small part in fostering cultural exchange, promoting literature and an appreciation of the arts during an incredibly exciting era in Beijing, and indeed for China as a whole."

I hope the owners do find a new location and keep The Bookworm going. It's doing a massive public service to bridge the gap between East and West, creating greater understanding of China, and at the same time making us expats feel like we're not alone in Beijing.