Wherefore Art Thou ... Book?

I was given certain tantalizing clues, but there was no certainty that I would find the book that I was looking for. And I had to have the book today.

My first stop was the Foreign Languages Bookstore in Wangfujing. I went in and it was a surprise, as I found riches that I had not been anticipating. Yan Geling, D. H. Lawrence and friends were all bouncing about, but no matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find the one that I was looking for. Wordsworth Classics were in abundance, and the carpet was printed with the logo of Penguin: Everything was set up just right, making the disappointment an even bigger mockery. There was no Doris Lessing, either, despite her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature this month!

I had tried the Beijing Bookworm the night before, but I walked out feeling the failure as it was absent from the shelves and would take three weeks for it to arrive on order.

Next stop was the Wangfujing Bookstore next to Oriental Plaza. As I rode the lift to the third floor and tried to see what was there in the foreign languages section, I realized that there was no hope as I did a search in their system. Looking for some guidance, I asked a member of uniformed staff and the reason was simple – they select and order books in around once every half a year, and it was likely that I would have to wait around the same length of time for that specific book I was so eager to find. The book wasn’t a recent release – but even if it were it wasn’t guaranteed that I’d find it in store.

What was there to do? I wandered through the streets, the lights blinking at me mockingly, the camera angle panning in and out from my face to the streets of Beijing. I felt frustration and disquiet as I looked in the eyes of foreigners for some kind of empathy.

Finally, I reached Chaterhouse Booktraders at The Place, and although the girls behind the desk initially looked apprehensive at my request, I knew that in their timid looks and quiet voices, I had found a refuge for the last shreds of my hope.

I wrote down the title of the book that I was looking for, and the quiet girl went scuttling off and returned with a brand-new copy for 128 RMB. I had to trawl the city to eventually find it - why didn’t Chinese bookshops list it in the first place on a database? We, as foreign language speakers, shouldn’t always have to endure physical exhaustion just to find that one particular book.

Jo Lusby, the General Manager of Penguin China, determinedly says that most of the books that are published in the West do exist in this sprawling metropolis. The problem is that we don’t have a Chinese equivalent of a Waterstones , Borders or some other mega-bookstore with a huge and searchable database.

Chinese Bookshops have yet to make a system where English-title books are listed in an extensive database.

Idealistically we shouldn’t always have to rely on the facilities of The Bookworm (as much as we adore the place), or make a trip to one of the two Chaterhouse Booktraders in the city. Idealistically we should be able to browse a English-language catalogue in the main Chinese bookshops in order to find the books of what we are looking for. This should be possible soon, dear readers, as we are aiming to regularly publish new English book-titles and classic re-issues in that's Beijing (In Print section) as well as blog about it.

The book I was looking for, by the way, was Sophie’s World. The author is Jostein Gaarder, who gave a book talk at The Beijing Bookworm on Monday night. Although it was published in 1996, and therefore not a recent publication, we should still be able to find it. This is a city that should be accommodating the needs and interests of its eclectic inhabitants.