One of these books is 2 kuai lighter than the other
One of the things about living in faraway lands that can be frustrating for a nerd like me is the frequently limited access to English books. In Turkey, they were quite pricey but I bought them anyway. A girl has needs, you see.
I had to leave 75% of them behind when I left (there may still be a MaryAnne Memorial Library in the teachers’ room at EF Levent), amounting to about 1000 lira’s worth of abandoned books. I could have travelled in Bulgaria for a month on what I had spent on books. However, books are a necessary part of my sanity.
Enter Shanghai and the marvellous Chinese disregard for copyright law.
You can buy real books here in many places and pay real book prices. You get a pretty good selection too, if you want to follow that path.
There are, however, alternatives.
There are the guys with the wooden carts that park themselves on random street corners in neighbourhoods known for their laowai populations. They veer heavily toward zeitgeisty business tomes, like Microtrends or Outliers or The Black Swan, as well as rather unexpected Haruki Murakamis or Candace Bushnells or Salman Rushdies. I’ve bought a few shrink wrapped novels from them. The same titles can also be found in fake dvd shops, again and again and again. These ones generally sell for around 15rmb (just over $2).
Yesterday I discovered a new source on Shanxi Nan Lu, near Nanchang Lu: a bookshop that mainly stocks Chinese books, with a shrink-wrapped laowai section at the front. I found a few books there that I hadn’t seen in other places. Since we’re going away for a month to Myanmar tonight, I thought I’d stock up on reading materials. I asked the woman how much my books cost. She took each one separately and weighed them. The thicker book was 10rmb, the lighter one only 8rmb.
I think this was the first time I’d ever bought books by weight.
7 Responses
Oh now I get it, duh. I just tried to comment on your LiveJournal blog only I was too thick to work out how to do it and then I realise that this is you. You are the ephemera and dettritus person. One and the same. Was confused, but got it now. To be more confusing, I’ve just moved from shantiwallah.blogspot.com to shantiwallah.com. OK, that’s everyone settled so here’s my real comment…
The other thing about rip off books is that they weigh a tonne in your backpack and there are usually upsidedown printed pages or ones that are missing altogether. Pirates get all the hassles.
Hey, hi! I had no idea that my many disparate Places were confusing. My apologies! Yes, I am Yaramaz at livejournal AND I’m She Went Away and a few other places besides. I get impatient with my blogs and sites and like to start afresh with better bells and whistles…
When I get back from Myanmar I”ll check out your site (everything is hard to reach here). I like your writing! As for the books, these Chinese fake books have been light, well printed and so far not upside down or missing pages. Marvellous!
That’s awesome! I live in Shanghai too & feel the same way about books – they’re necessary to live 🙂 I would love to check out that bookstore that sells by the pound. Can you give more specific directions? Thanks 🙂
Alas, the by-the-gram one I went to seems to have vanished overnight in that abrupt way peculiar to Shanghai and is now a cheap rug shop. It was on Shanxi nan lu at Nanchang lu. Other places I’ve found cheap but good books have been from carts on Donghu lu near Huaihai lu and in a DVD shop on Jianguo lu, near Jiashan (between the real estate agents and the 7-11).
Bummer! In case you’re interested in cheap stuff (I read that you like buying things 🙂 )I’ve just discovered this: http://www.shanghaisecondhand.com/
I haven’t been there yet, but it looks like they have tons of cheap books.
Oh, that is dangerous!
[…] the price of a pack of gum. That pales in comparison to the books. A few months ago, I wrote about a now defunct fake bookshop in our neighbourhood that sold books by weight. The paper was worth more than the content. They are now a cheap and […]