CHINESE bookstore chain Librairie Avant-Garde opened a new branch in Xiadi Village in Pingnan County, Fujian Province, at the end of September.

The new outlet is surrounded by rice fields that are turning golden at this time of the year.

It lies in an 800-year-old village, where traditional dwellings with rammed-earth walls and wooden structures have kept the village’s overall look intact throughout the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

The bookstore was constructed in the shell of a traditional house. Architect Hua Li, who has completed several rural projects over the past decade, embedded a modern concrete-and-steel structure between the surviving rammed-earth walls.

However, he has kept the external appearance of the edifice in line with the vernacular architecture and retained a section of the ruined walls to form an entrance yard.

The bookstore stocks around 7,500 titles on such topics as architecture, photography, art, film and design, as well as classics of the humanities and social sciences.

But the store specializes in books on rural development, the protection of ancient villages, folk arts and handicrafts, agricultural civilizations, rural education, rural-themed literature, and the geography and history of the county and province.

It also holds such events as academic and cultural salons, movie and theater shows, small art exhibitions and live music performances. It sells more than 140 kinds of cultural products that feature the local natural beauty, geography, culture and history.

It’s the bookstore chain’s fourth branch to open in a rural location, after it established a store in a former ancestral hall in Bishan Village in Anhui Province, not far from Huangshan Mountain. Another branch was adapted from a renovated traditional dwelling belonging to the She ethnic group in Tonglu and followed the establishment of an outlet in Zhejiang Province on top of a mountain in Songyang.

Qian Xiaohua, founder of the chain, believes the identity of Chinese culture is rooted in the countryside, and it is therefore key for the chain to revitalize rural life through culture.

Their main motive is to make a return to the grassroots, give rural children access to quality literature and show them that the hopes of the village depend on them, Qian said at the opening ceremony Sept. 28. (China Daily)