Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

THE Bay Area Store of Shenzhen Book City, located east of the central green axis of Bao’an District’s central area, began construction Saturday and is expected to become China’s largest bookstore upon completion.

The bookstore, with an investment of around 2.3 billion yuan (US$360.87 million), is set to be completed in December 2024 and open in 2025.

The bookstore, dubbed as the “Eye of the Bay Area” due to its double-jade plate design concept, will span 66,000 square meters and 130,000 square meters of floor space, with two levels above ground and two underground.

The project primarily consists of a themed bookstore, a bay area folk customs museum, an exhibition space and a cultural exchange platform. The 96,000-square-meter underground construction area includes public reading, parent-child activity experience, a  theater, a cultural release hall, and service supporting facilities.

It is expected to host more than 800 cultural events and receive more than 10 million visitors per year after  completion.

The bookstore is designed to be a multicultural service platform focusing on knowledge service and promoting reading, and developing the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’s (GBA) cultural identity.

The bay area folk customs museum, which will be an important part of the bookstore, will display the folk customs of the Lingnan region and the GBA.

The Bay Area Store, according to Shenzhen Publishing Group, will be a new-generation store following Shenzhen Book City’s Luohu, Nanshan, CBD, Bao’an, Longgang, and Longhua stores.

It is also one of Shenzhen’s “top 10 cultural facilities in the new era,” and it will become a landmark public cultural facility in the GBA.