Suna in Wonderland

Ever since we moved to Hong Mei Rd, I rarely go to city center. So when I had appointment in people square today, at first I was feeling bit lazy but gradually started to wonder how this place has changed since last time. (Probably 6months ago)

After nice lunch, my friend Yvonne and I decided to visit largest shanghai book store.

The entire 6th floor building is full of books

<<Shanghai Book City>>  No.465 Fuzhou Road

This Fuzhou road is also has small book stores around the Shanghai Book City. However All the small stores  seemed going to close down soon. All the books were placed in a huddle and people were shouting that they are giving huge discounts. Yvonne explained that maybe the store is closing down due to  Shanghai Book City. I felt bad plus discount made me enter into small store.

I  found 4 Chinese traditional story books with CD, hoping that it would help to improve my poor Chinese. Each book originally costs 79.2RMB so I wondered how much I would get discounted.  20%? 30% or70%?

Interesting part was when cashier weighed the book on a scale!! Half a kilo will cost 15RMB. (Depends on the theme of the book, cost per half a kilo will change. Variation of 6 RMB, 11 RMB and 15RMB)

How heavy is your book?

It was bit shocking concept to me. Content of the book would not really matter but number of pages and quality of paper would matter in this case. If authors finds out about this, it would be very insulting but I guess for seller it makes sense to judge a book. Instead of calculating percentage of the book with headache (i also have headache when i have to calculate discount %), weighing book would be much easier.

So just like I was buying fish or meat, I bought 5 books for 55 RMB . Although I was only planning to buy one book but still i feel satisfied with prices. Guess now my job is to READ THEM!

After I  got out of the small book store, I started to notice that almost all the book stores near by Shanghai Book City, had same discount notice hanging on their door, attracting people.

It’s written 0.5 kg for 11 RMB

All over sudden I started to doubt if this is a market  strategy,  not necessarily clearing out the shop.  So my next mission is to find out if I was an aimed fish or store really closed down next time I visit this area.