Alone & Lonely（Excerpts）

By Nina

Shanghai is a place with lots of bookstores. But in my memory, none of them serve the purpose of letting more people enjoy reading. Just a few books on the bookshelves have been opened. I was very confused about this. I thought a bookstore should have a strong reading atmosphere, but the bookstores in Shanghai is actually very commercialized. In my opinion, a bookstore's purpose is to let more people appreciate the joy of reading. But until now, I hadn't seen a bookstore in Shanghai that matches my opinion.

The first time I found a bookstore that was just as I imagined was in Changsha. It was called Lezhi Bookstore. Every book there was opened. I wished for the chance to read every book there if I had enough time. But there are just a few bookstores like Lezhi. More bookstores in Shanghai are similar with cafes. There aren’t many books in it, but a lot of kinds of coffee. Most of them are popular places on social media. Which means you take a photo there and send it to the Internet, to show the web user you have been to a cafe with plenty of books. But almost nobody spends their time reading there. They only read the book at the moment they are taking a photo. Shanghai is so commercialized, there are countless examples like that.

But thankfully, Shanghai has lots of libraries. Every district has at least one library as a landmark. In 2024 Shanghai finished the “15-minute walking circle project” which means every citizen in Shanghai can walk less than 15 minutes from their house and find a community service center. There are mini libraries all over. Every citizen in Shanghai can get a library card. This card can borrow books in all libraries in Shanghai including, but not limited to, the big libraries in districts and mini libraries in communities.

I love studying in the library. I think many people think the same. But most of the people in the library always go online. They don’t read a book, but stare online until they leave the library. They go to the library for psychological consolation. They think surfing online at home really wastes a lot of time, the feeling they get when they come to the library is that they have learned. The truth is they change places but didn’t change their actions.

When I travel in Japan, I realized that the Japanese have awesome reading habits. There are many small, Japanese books called “pocket books”. Readers can bring the pocket books and read everywhere. There are bookstores everywhere in Japan. What impressed me the most was a tiny bookstore in Shibuya. The most lively intersection in the world. The bookstore is on the second floor. The stairs to the bookstore are very narrow. But each stair has a famous sentence written on it. The second floor is like a garden. I guess the shop owner used the fake grass and the fake flowers to decorate the shop. Every bookshelf is covered by the leaves. That feels like a book forest. The smell of trees are always in the room. But it’s actually the smell of the wooden shelves and the smell of “wooden” papers.

Japan’s magazines also surprised me. There are so many kinds of magazines in Japan. Japanese have magazines for how to cook or some other living skills. Every bookstore in Japan has a section for showing the readers magazines. If you buy the magazine in Japan, you will get some small gift for free. The gift is always connected with the topic of the magazine. The common gifts are bags, cosmetic samples and some idols’ cards. I was interested in why Japan’s bookstores always have “magazine walls.” The origin of the magazine in Japan can go back to 1873, the magazine has been integrated into Japan’s culture.

I have seen a huge amount of people in Japan reading on the subway and listening to music. Most of the subway lines in Japan are on the ground. Just imagine how comfortable to read a pocket book on the subway, listening to a favorite song and sight seeing. An amazing place to read a book. My mom used to study in the college in Japan, so she is really familiar with Japan. When we travel there we always stay in the residence community. The best place to feel the local culture.

At the beginning of this year, I traveled to Hong Kong. We didn’t stay there for a long time. But the strong reading atmosphere attracted my attention. The bookstores in Hong Kong are located in places I wouldn’t expect. Hong Kong is a really small place, almost every street has a hidden corner, and on that corner will be a bookstore. Though Hong Kong is part of China’s territory, but in the past 100 years ,Britain took control of the island. So a very important culture in Hong Kong is English. The bookstores in Hong Kong are built by three parts. The study books, the English books and Chinese books. I noticed most of the book topic are human history.

I remembered the bookstore in The Chinese university in HK. That bookstore was so big. It’s really hard to find a place that spacious in HK, every inch of land there is precious. There were used books and a part of that bookstore was for students to buy reference books. The amount of bookstores in HK gave me an illusion that every citizen in Hong Kong is reading all the time.

Although that amazing friendship has been the history and ended for a longtime, I still can’t stop thinking about it. Now I figured out, no one did the wrong things in that friendship. I don’t want to say I am a person who has a sense of ambition, so I can’t have long friendships with three girls who lack ambition. The truth is I will be very uneasy if I don’t progress. In feel if I don’t make progress, I am lagging behind. I have to be true to myself. I think the reason why I don’t like to stay with myself is I can’t be honest to myself.

I thought I won’t have a friendship like the time I enjoy playing with other three girls. But this year I start to read books in a torrential style. I found some characters in the books were the same as me, while some characters have totally different personalities. It feels like I find myself in books and also find myself in the parallel universe. I started reading novels, the story line always attracts me. I can see various different kinds of people living on this world, in their own way, by their own life style. Books replace my failed friendship. When I am reading a novel that I really love, I can not be disturb by outside.. I think the world just left me and the book I am reading, just like I thought the world just left me and other three girls when we were together. They have already found a girl to replace me, and started their new team adventure. Sometimes I think everyone who has appeared in my life is a part of me.

I have realized I am a person who never stays in a comfortable place. I have a comfortable zone, but I am always trying to make it bigger. I have been a person like that for almost 15 years. I am not in a hurry to make my comfortable zone bigger and to lay in it and never stand up to work hard again is not my dream. I am just a person who can't be satisfied with the existing state of affairs and is reluctant to move forward. This is a part of my personality that I love.

I close the book and see outside the floor-to-ceiling window of the library, a large advertising screen on the opposite building. The screen flashes too fast, changing to different advertisements. I walk slowly to the bookshelf, and put the book back. The mentality I have now is the same as this book’s writer. I think it's time to get back to life. I would not change anything I have already experienced, they have made me who I am today. Everything in the past is already over. What I can do is to choose the future I want.

Now, I am still on the road to find myself.