Comments on: Used books online in China

By: Lena Lencek

Lena Lencek — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:06:04 +0000

Sorry about typo: make that “DiAspora”. L.L.

By: Lena Lencek

Lena Lencek — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:04:59 +0000

I am actually soliciting help: I am here in Shanghai researching Russian Disaspora culture of the 1930s-40s. Shanghai “White” Russians published a number of journals and dailies. What is my best starting point on tracking these down? Any help on dealers? Thank you.
Lena Lencek

By: My Life in Kunming » Bored in Chengdu

My Life in Kunming » Bored in Chengdu — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 14:05:57 +0000

[...] Yesterday I took a late afternoon stroll through Chengdu’s DuFuCaoTang (DuFu’s Thatched Cottage), a park dedicated to Dufu (杜甫）one of China’s all-time greatest poets who lived during the Tang dynasty. I am a big fan of Dufu and have read a good deal about his history and his surviving poems. Seeing this park/shrine dedicated to his life and works was on my list of must see things in Chengdu. The park was beautifully landscaped with ponds, rivers, tropical plants, and calligraphy. I was happy to see that so many Chinese appreciated their literary history and culture. Afterwards I was strolling around having absolutely no luck finding a taxi in the evening heat when I saw a string of bookstores. Now, I love bookstores here in China a lot. They are everywhere and always full of people. The Chinese seem utterly excited to learn everything, especially languages, and I respect them all the more for it. Bookstores are usually huge new department stores here but the neighborhood of bookstores I found in Chengdu was small and almost entirely full of used books and old propaganda posters. These places were like any good bookshop, or household, completely full of books. The floors were stacked with them, the walls filled to the ceiling and always a musty smell that made me want to look through every pile and every shelf. I didn’t do that, but I did buy a book of DuFu’s poetry and an old propaganda poster of a young communist soldier reading Mao’s red book (perfect for any reading area!). Anyway, yesterday looking through the amazing Danwei Blog I found link to a post about finding Chinese used books online (here). The author mentions the book market near the DuFuCaoTang, which was a cool coincidence. [...]

By: Jon Fernquest

Jon Fernquest — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:49:24 +0000

Thanks a million. I have a long bibliography of historical works on the Ming dynasty in Chinese and no inclination to travel to west or a Chinese library to get them

By: zhw

zhw — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:10:59 +0000

Kongfz.com is quite a useful service, especially if there’s a book you want and you don’t have the time to comb the used book markets week after week. Otherwise, it is *really* expensive – even for the cheap, 3 or 4 yuan books, postage and handling can add up, and for harder-to-find stuff, the markup can be 4x or 5x.

The booksellers (and you’re right, the shops are often completely virtual) I’ve met have a completely different appreciation of printed material from the book buyers. My roommate, for example, frequented the used book stores and bought books to *read*. His classmate ran an online bookshop in southern Beijing and also frequented the used book markets, and while he knew printing runs, could quote publishers’ limited editions, ccould name the different covers attached to different printings, as for the content, he couldn’t really have cared less.