Chapter 14 Memories of Bookstore Street

I haven't been back to Shanghai for many years.Everything in Shanghai must have changed a lot.Not to mention anything else, the changes in Bookstore Street—Sima Road alone are beyond what I can imagine now.In the past, I have walked almost every bookstore on this road, as well as every brick and stone in front of the store. I remember that when I returned to Shanghai in 1957, the first thing I was anxious about was to visit Four Horse Road.I thought that as soon as I stepped on that road, I could walk with my eyes closed, touch the facade with my hand, and know which bookstore it was without looking.

At that time, the impression of Fourth Avenue in my mind was still before 1937. I was so naive as to think that if I walked on that familiar street, even if it was me who was walking across the street. Myself, it will not surprise me.I completely forgot that twenty years have passed since the time, and it was twenty years turned upside down.In the past twenty years, Shanghai has been baptized by war and life in hell, and now it has been reborn and transformed into a brand new Shanghai.This four-horse road is no longer the former four-horse road in my mind. Only the pagoda-like roof at the corner of Wangping Street was still recognizable. I used this as a sign, stood there and looked around, and it was like waking up from a dream. I laughed at myself.

In a blink of an eye now, several years have passed, and this Shuju Street alone must have changed a lot. Where is Xinhua Bookstore?Where is the ancient bookstore?Also, where are those professional bookstores that specialize in art books and foreign languages?I spread out the map of Shanghai in my mind to look for it, but it was already blurred. I was completely lost and couldn't find anything. When I returned to Shanghai that time, in addition to Sima Road, I went to the bottom of North Sichuan Road.One of the purposes is to see Uchiyama Bookstore.I already knew that the Uchiyama Bookstore could not still be open there, but I still couldn't convince myself not to check it out.It is also one of the places where you can't go wrong even if you close your eyes.

When I got out of the car, I saw a pharmacy and a service office of the People's Bank of China, where the Neishan Bookstore was located.I stood for a while, as if I still saw the bald "boss" grinning and flipping through messed-up books for customers on the shelf, and it was Mr. Lu Xun who was sitting on a rattan chair and smoking a cigarette leisurely. Walking on Jing'an Temple Road, I accidentally found an old bookstore specializing in foreign books, which opened next to the food hall "Luyang Village".This is an old bookstore newly opened after 1949.Thinking of the collection of books that I had lost without a trace in Shanghai, I hurried in full of hope, searched the shelves carefully, and walked out empty-handed.I comforted myself, maybe the whole batch was sent to the library, when should I go to the library to have a look.