The disappearing bookstore and the memory that never disappeared

Feng Tang said he gave him a girl at the age of eighteen. At the age of eighteen, I had no girl, only a bike.

I came to Beijing for the second time that year, but I never left here again.

at that time, the first thing Beijing did not lack was the blue sky, and the second was the bookstore, just like what it lacks most now. Of course, there are old hutongs, sweet pigeon whistles and cheap but thirsty bowls of tea for me. On campus, the most common thing to do is to occupy a seat, and the second is to skip class, just like today's seats such as eating and buying a car lottery are as common. But at that time, most people skipped classes in order to pick up girls or go to Internet cafes to play games. I also skipped a lot of boring courses, but I often rode out of the campus on my bike, either going out the west door and going north along Suzhou Street to Hai Tu. Or take the east gate south to Baiyi Road (yes, it is now called Zhongguancun South Street), and then embark on a journey to visit various bookstores.

many years later, the familiarity with many place names and routes in this city still comes from the memory of a bicycle walking through the streets at that time.

four years later, I graduated and stayed here, and I once had a girl of my own. I remember saying proudly and regretfully to the girl that I might not have read all the books I wanted to read in these four years, but I must have finished all the bookstores I had to go. It was a pity that I was alone, and the girl said, "then take her to walk again, and I said yes." But what's even more regrettable is that the girl left by herself before we walked together.

there was a book city in Haidian at that time-- it still has it now, but it has long since declined. When I was in high school, I always heard from my brother and read about the Dumas he bought me from there, and it was so close to where I studied that it became a place where I went almost every week.

Guolin style was regarded as a landmark of the chart at that time, especially the fourth Ring Road did not exist at that time. The ground floor of the first Haohai Building, like the wind outside the south gate of Peking University, has a sense of location with a winding path-- for these two bookstores not far apart, I usually call them "Shuangfeng". At that time, the hanging of movie posters was a manifestation of literature, art and taste, and the implantation of cafes was also standard in humanities bookstores. However, the little money in my pocket, in the end, only bought books, bread and love, which was not a multiple choice question at all in my time, let alone now.

the best memory of the national forest style is to meet Yu Hua and Mo Yan here and ask them to leave a message in the book.

Yu Hua wrote me four words: live well, for sixteen years, it seems that I have fulfilled my mission for the time being. Mo Yan wrote: because of the book we have become friends, although we are still not friends, but with his Nobel Prize in hand, the book on my shelf has become a rare book. And the biggest comfort to me is that it gave me two encounters with Calvino's "Winter Night pedestrians" and Orwell's "Animal Farm".

I must admit that not every time I go to Shuangfeng is so lonely. There was a girl who accompanied me several times, but she was not my girl. At that time, we were all young. I loved talking, she loved to laugh, and we all liked to go to bookstores, watch movies, eat snacks and take a walk together, but that's all. So I never fall asleep unconsciously, and I don't know how many wind and rain flowers have blown down in my dreams.

Beihang also goes there frequently. At that time, there was no Universiade Village outside the West Gate, let alone a city railway. The green leather train from Xizhimen to Zhangjiakou passes through here every day. It costs 4 yuan to go back and forth to Badaling and pays homage to the bronze statue of Zhan Tianyou at Juyongguan pass. Nostalgic and cozy. There are often some old book stalls here, and they have been very valuable, such as the Hong Kong edition of Farewell my Concubine signed by Li Bihua, which was won for five yuan, which is still talked about by me to this day. However, in life, there are gains and losses. In the same place, different stalls have also witnessed that the first edition of the Golden Age signed by Wang Xiaobo was held one step ahead of me, which is also five yuan. That kind of feeling, although not forever lose my love, but also instantly discouraged, after all, it is no one else, is Xiaobo.

but you are always alone through Beijing through the East Gate, usually riding wherever you go, but Chang'an Street is often taken, and you can always pass Sanwei Book House, Xidan and Wangfujing on the regular route. I also like to go to various publishers that I was familiar with when I was a child, such as 166 Chaonnei Street, especially various reader service departments. it feels a bit like a reunion of old friends, but it is very fresh. At that time, I could eat only one meal a day and exchange bread for love related to books, so that I was as thin as a gust of wind. Of course, this is not a good thing now, even though I enjoyed it at first.

in those four years of college and even the year of marriage, it took a total of nine years, and I have not been absent once in the book market after two sessions a year or even three times a year. In my early years, the book market was in the Taimiao, that is, the working people's Palace of Culture. If I didn't go there by bike, I would have taken 320 from the East Gate of the National people's Congress and then dropped No. 1, 4, or 52. I changed to The Temple of Earth the year after graduation. I already live in the unit dormitory, near the Temple of Heaven, basically back and forth from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, which is much more convenient. I remember that the first time The Temple of Earth Book Market was in winter, when I was preparing to return home with a full load, I first received a text message from that girl: are you at work? Are you busy? It's just that I thought at that time that she was asking me something, but later I realized that it was an expression of yearning. Half a month later, at the bleak north gate of Temple of Heaven, she became my girl, though only for a few months.

then I moved back to Haidian and lived on College Road for four years. Across the street from Chengfu Road gave me a belated encounter with Wansheng. To me, just the convenience of crossing the Beiyu campus is like going back to my college days.

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you can go home in no hurry after work. If you stop anywhere on Chengfu Road, you can walk to Halloween. At that time, it was too old to give up a cup of coffee, but what was more precious than bread became time, so I still came and went in a hurry. I almost never sat idle in the "wake up". When I was tired from standing or watching, I just went straight home, simple and direct.

Chengfu Road seems to have always been suitable for leisure.Some bookstores even stroll out unconsciously on the streets, such as Douban Bookstore in the south of the road. I don't remember whether I first registered Douban id and became an elder, or I first came out from Wansheng to look at the opposite side and saw this store. I only knew that it should all be 2005, and because of the main special books, I once bought the most books in this store until I moved to the house I bought in Fengtai in 2008. A few years later, when I was hanging out in Wang Siying or Southwest Logistics, I often met the owner of Douban Bookstore picking books together. It's just that I remember him, but he doesn't remember me for a long time.

it was also during the period of living in Haidian that two years belonged to the period of concentrated travel, and visiting bookstores in strange cities was also a habit I had formed at that time. The feeling of looking forward to unknown bookstores was a bit like looking forward to an affair on a journey. It is said that everyone is looking forward to an encounter when traveling alone: the lower berth of the train, the neighbor of the flight, the revolving door of the hotel, the table of the restaurant, so there should be a good bookstore waiting for me in every coming city: the lights after midnight, the places where old friends meet, the lonely books that can't be found, and even the city's landmarks. Yes, this is the ideal, but the reality is that there has never been an affair during the journey, and the bookstore is gradually dying out in our city.

when I was 25 years old, I bought the house I now live in in front of a pit in Fengtai that I had never been to before. I borrowed the down payment, paid the mortgage myself, and didn't even tell my parents. Although it will take more than two years to reclaim the house, it seems that becoming a house slave as soon as possible has always been the best choice for life.

A month later, I played football with my undergraduate classmates after visiting several small bookstores in my alma mater. Then I met a girl who was in graduate school. Two years later, she became my bride. The romance during this period has nothing to do with the bookstore, but as a girlfriend, she is willing to lie with me in a bed full of books, even if she reads her Zhang ailing and I flip through my Kafka; as a wife, she can design a small study for me in my new home, even at the expense of her cloakroom. But as the mother of the child, she can no longer stand the pile of books in the house full of holes, because in this era when the bookstore disappeared, I moved the bookstore back home.

after marriage, the number of times I went to the bookstore dropped sharply, but the collection of books at home increased exponentially, especially after I moved to my new home and had a small study, it became more unscrupulous, resulting in the study being piled up with no one in it. Forced to lock up as a library. It can be said that it took me about five years to go from 100 to 1000, but it only took me a year or two to go from 1000 to 10000. On the one hand, this may be similar to one of the reasons for the disappearance of bookstores, which is the rise of online bookstores; on the other hand, it is also related to the fact that they often drive to Wang Siying and Southwest Logistics to approve books after buying a car. This directly led to the later experience of the sea, or tired do not like, it is conceivable that when shopping in the bookstore is no different from Taobao shopping or shopping in the vegetable market, the kind of evening lights and the general surprise and pleasure known in other places have disappeared. It's as if you thought you were having an affair, but then you found out it was just a pre-arranged spring purchase, which ruined the scene.

therefore, on the question of "can bookstores be replaced by online stores", I am a staunch conservative, just like "can books be replaced by e-books", both emotionally and intellectually. Even if all the new books are published electronically in the future, at least I will still have my own house full of collections; even if all the bookstores in this city are really going to die, I will at least have those bookstores that I have walked through, in my memory that I have never disappeared.