Could anyone tell me if it is possible for a non-Shanghainese to open an English Bookstore in downtown Shanghai presently? And, what will the criteria be if I want to open that Bookstore, as a foreigner?

ANY aid on this matter will be appreciated.

Links on some local stores are as attached:

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/200 ... _chate.php

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/pr ... 0717020016

THANKS and GREAT CHEERS!

MayLin
4 September 2005 - Sunday - 8:48 pm

I think you will find plenty business, I am dying to find a book store that offers a variety of English books. Have nothing to read here is contributing to my drinking habit, and I am not an intellectual that finds reading Shakespeare or Charles Dickens that the Chinese English bookstore offers as relaxing and enjoyable time killer.

My suggestion, open a used book store, no need to be big. It could be a place we can drop off our already read books to share with others and place to buy relatively cheaper foreign books. I alone have 20+ books that i brought with me when i came to this country, already read them so its a waste to be sitting on my bookshelf. I am more than happy to donate them so others can get some use out of them.

Well spotted lliu316.

Last time I've been to the foreign bookstore in Fuzhou Lu it was depressive as visiting a the burned sections of a hospital.

They had the best of the worst, waterfalls of it. The most boring, worthless, tasteless english literature you can come up with. Dickens, Shakespeare, even the fukng Bronte sisters. Pyramids of it. Nothing, absolutely nothing of Miller, Huxley, Orwell, Wilde, ...

I think there must be some sensorship going on in what can be distributed or not here, which makes opening up a bookstore neither attractive nor profitable (remember that media is strictly controlled here).

The solution as I see is for people to trade their books, or auction them....but who has the time of writting down the titles they have and posting it online somewhere. Also, ebooks from soulseek and bittorrent are becoming more and more of an alternative...god save the net.

Haha, Orwell, whats an anti-communist like you doing in China?

"Haha, Orwell, whats an anti-communist like you doing in China?"

I ask myself the same question every single day, with the razor sliding in the throat and all, a bland good morning face, shaving and putting up a pseudo normal satisfied face.

As for Orwell, he fought for the Reds in Spain. He was anti-totalitarian, not anti-communist. Actually far from anti-communist.