Dreamland Fantasy • The Night at Xinhua Bookstore

The Xinhua Bookstore is located right across from the four-star Fuying Hotel, complementing each other and transcending the local atmosphere of the nearby sightseeing street, reflecting a simple beauty. There is no reversal of day and night on this North Huan City Road that I have walked twice. Yet, it is the same road that recognizes the tourists. The sightseeing street is just behind the main street, a place of local interest that can be explored during the day. There are signs with calligraphy, the sounds of buying and selling, eye-catching prices, and the outdatedness that falls off like out-of-fashion clothing. I want to carefully record the folk prosperity and bustle as a stranger, unrelated to me yet intimately connected. I don't want to just see the shops lined up on the pedestrian street in the city center, crowded with tourists. That place is far from a sense of reality, as distant as clouds on the horizon, you know what I am talking about right now. The bookstore at night is crystal clear and bright, an unconstrained darkness. A door and window separate two different worlds. The echoes of readers or those selecting books in contemplation are almost invisible. Perhaps, they have also faded over time. Now it's around seven or eight in the evening, the caffeine has not completely worn off, it has the vitality of blood flowing through veins. I like this place, not just for its quiet environment, but for a scarcity in reality. The virtual network is also reality, but I can't seek it out. It comes to me. The book center loses the positivity and optimism of sunlight, and the gloomy person cannot stretch their mind and body. Now, those idle small round wooden tables on the second floor, as sober as coffee tables, make me want to take them home. There are two teenagers, a boy and a girl, each guarding their corners, immersed in their own ideal worlds, rejecting the worldly fireworks at night. Is the ceiling on the second floor Bauhaus or Fauvist? Just by this decoration (I'm sure it was renovated when I was lost, to become what it is now), I feel it has already surpassed the impression of the book center. Imagination and fantasy are actually an indescribable impression. Rust and roughness can set off a tranquil atmosphere. I like these walls and ceilings that are either rustic or perhaps indifferent. I saw 'Hemingway' again, I remember just walking out of the 'Feast' coffee restaurant at the Fuying Hotel this morning, feeling full of life. As for the light bulbs hanging in mid-air, they represent the thoughts, landscapes, great men, and philosophers that are not present but can illuminate the entire lost life. A bookstore really cannot be born only from books. It needs to transcend like a person, until it reaches the eternal dark corners. I am here, seeing everything that stands opposite the darkness. The fire extinguisher box is blatantly placed there. What needs to be extinguished is not a sudden fire, but ignorance and foolishness, the friends of books know it is lovely. This is definitely a great place to buy study supplies and children's books. Children's books and study materials are all on the second floor, and I am again surprised to find the poetry selected by Bei Dao among a row of children's literature, 'Poems for Children'.