Chinese man builds bookstore on a mountaintop. Yes, he’s a poet.
A 57-year-old “self-styled poet” (aren’t they all?) has spent $116,000 of his own money to build a bookstore in a mountaintop village. Oh, and it’s shaped like the number 7 and contains 7,000 books. No, this is not a parable.
As Jiang Libo told the South China Morning Post:
Before my bookshop was built, the closest bookshop or library to this village was in a town about 30km away. I’ve found fewer and fewer people read books, and bookstores generally are struggling. My thought is: when villagers are idle, or kids are on holiday, they can come to read books. Isn’t that wonderful?
Yeah, I suppose it is pretty wonderful, if not a little nutty. The store, located in Zhejiang province, on the eastern coast, is appropriately named Milestone Bookstore, and news of its unusual location has gone viral on Chinese social media.
American poets, the gauntlet has been thrown. Your move.
