Editor's note: This is the 12th episode of our series "Faces Fighting Coronavirus" documenting people from different walks of life who are affected by the pandemic as well as those who are trying to keep their lives as normal as they can to keep our society running. Here you can find the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th stories.

Our 12th episode recounts how one bookstore stays open against the odds while providing a sanctuary for people's spirit in this tough time.

It has been a long cold winter for bookstore owners in China. Since the coronavirus outbreak shut down almost all offline businesses in late January, many owners of the country's some 70,000 brick-and-mortar bookstores fear they won't be able to reopen.

With no customers and mounting pressure from rent and employee salaries, the pain is felt by both big names in the industry and smaller private sellers. A crop of brick-and-mortar bookstores had no choice but to throw in the towel, while others turned to social media for support from their stuck-at-home fans.

"Bookstores have been struggling for some time. The epidemic has made the situation much worse," Wu Yanping, general manager of OWSpace, told CGTN last week at one of its bookstores inside an east Beijing shopping mall.

Wu told us the store was the first and only one to have reopened since the shutdown, as the mall has largely resumed business. The other of the two remaining stores in Beijing is still closed inside a locked down office complex. The company last year had to close a store in the city permanently.

The 15-year-old bookstore chain, which also runs cafés and sells a range of peripheral products, has cultivated a loyal following over the years with its culture-centered brand. An OWSpace staff at the shopping mall café said some of their regular patrons have returned in recent weeks. Although traffic is about a tenth of what it was before the outbreak, the bookstore is already doing better than many others thanks to its influence, Wu said.

'Save bookstores'

In February, a crowdfunding letter from the Beijing-based chain called attention to Chinese booksellers' plight after it was posted by OWSpace's social media accounts. Xu Zhiyuan, one of OWSpace's founders and a well-known personality in literary circles, likened the state of bookstores to being on a deserted island in the letter, calling on book lovers to help "save bookstores."

The post received more than 100,000 views within 24 hours and was shared on social media by celebrities and opinion leaders who sympathized with the cause. Wu said the response exceeded their expectations.

But the majority of less known stores weren't as fortunate. According to a survey conducted last month by Bookstore Union, an alliance for China's brick-and-mortar bookstores, over 90 percent of bookselling businesses were closed during the outbreak, 99 percent had no steady incomes and 79 percent didn't have the financial resources to last more than three months even after reopening.

The prolonged closure has been particularly devastating to small and medium-sized bookstores, whose numbers were already dwindling due to intense competition from online retailers. In 2019 alone, 500 bookstores in China closed their doors. One bookstore owner in Haiyan County, Zhejiang Province reportedly began selling construction materials after announcing the closure of his shop in March.

Bookseller-turned-influencer

The crisis has brought Chinese bookstore owners of all sizes, along with publishing houses, together in a united front, and also forced many out of their comfort zones.

With no offline business at all, many bookstores have been depending solely on online sales via live-streaming, according to Sun Qian, founder of Bookstore Union. Sun told CGTN the alliance has been organizing live events such as panel discussions and book sharing sessions for participating stores. The last event was joined by more than 50 bookstores across China.

Sun, who has been in the bookselling business for 13 years and advising bookstores around the country, said the future of bookstores lies in their ability to curate content for an audience both online and offline, which will test the seller's knowledge about their products and the quality of their creative output.

OWSpace, which had to move all its offline events online since the outbreak, has now created OWSpace LIVE to feature guests and recommend new books via live-streaming. Wu told CGTN this is not just a temporary solution, but rather a long-term plan.

"Our colleagues who started out as shop assistants have now turned into live-streamers," Wu said, adding that what matters is one's taste and attitude. "Only thing that's changed is the form. Same guests, same authors, we present them through live-streaming. It will still be a good book if you recommend it on live."

In March, founder Xu made headlines by teaming up with Weiya, one of China's most successful live-streamers on e-commerce platform Taobao, in a live-streaming session. The broadcast drew 145,000 online viewers, who bought over 700,000 yuan (98,700 U.S. dollars) worth of books and related products during the session.

Wu said OWSpace donated all the profit from that live-streaming session because it wanted to help bookstores which don't have the same level of influence. However, he believes long-term upgrade is a must for the industry even without the epidemic, which only hastened the change that's inevitable.

"You can't rely on people's idealistic feelings to survive. Because running a bookstore is also a commercial activity. It still follows the commercial logic," Wu said.

All about reading

Bookstores in China experienced their first real crisis brought on by the rise of e-commerce platforms around 2009, when a large number of brick-and-mortar stores went under. The industry began to recover around 2013, helped by a range of supporting measures and rent subsidies. 

Since then, a new breed of slickly designed bookstores started popping up in commercial areas, providing spaces of relaxation and selfie hot spots. While that has certainly helped attracting more customers into the establishments, it didn't do much for actual book sales.

"It's not easy (for bookstores) to say no to selfie taking," Sun said. "We just hope that these people would become potential customers when they spend time there."

Wu said some longtime book lovers even criticized what they saw as misplaced priorities. "'Are you still about selling books?' They asked us," he said.

"Physical bookstores had some policy support then, so we enjoyed a more optimal environment. But the fundamental problems have remained," said the manager, who had seen the ups and downs since 2007.

The boom lasted until last year, according to Sun. Then the epidemic changed everything.

What doesn't change is one's love of reading. In February, a young man in Wuhan was photographed reading Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order inside one of the temporary hospitals for COVID-19 patients. The patient, nicknamed "reading guy," won widespread praise on social media for his calmness after the photo went viral. The photo was shared by Fukuyama on the author's own Twitter account.

"Reading can bring comfort to the spirit. It is an easy, low-cost way to perceive the world," Wu said. He told CGTN that The Plague by French Nobel laureate Albert Camus has been sold out in the store lately.

Now with many people around the world staying home, it might be a good time to open a book. Wu said he heard some readers have started reading classics they wouldn't normally get into, like James Joyce's Ulysses, for example. 

"There is never a good time or bad time for reading. It should be a daily habit," he said. "If people have plenty of free time, put phones and computers aside, and pick up that book you always wanted to read."

Video reporter: Qi Jianqiang 

Video editor: Zhang Wanbao

Text by Zhou Minxi

Cover image designed by Yin Yating

Supervisor: Zhang Shilei