Hillside verses

Librairie Avant-Garde's largest branch opens in Nanjing, with events paying homage to poetry, Yang Yang reports.

In April, a bunch of poets gathered at the new branch of Librairie Avant-Garde, Tangshan Hill Pit Bookshop, for the first poetry award initiated by the store.

Built on the ruins of a mine at the foot of the hill, about 4 kilometers from the nearest Wenquan (hot spring) village, in a suburb of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, it is the bookstore chain's 18th branch and largest, covering 1,300 square meters.

It is also the first village bookshop to open in Nanjing since Qian Xiaohua founded Librairie Avant-Garde 25 years ago.

The branch offers a collection of nearly 20,000 books, among which more than 1,000 are on poetry. Works from home and abroad, such as by Chinese poets Haizi and Beidao, Syria's Adonis, India's Rabindranath Tagore and Portugal's Fernando Pessoa, can be seen on the shelves at the entrance of the bookshop.

On two walls are more than 5,000 books of other genres, including works by foreign writers, such as William Shakespeare, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Italo Calvino and Margaret Atwood, and Chinese writers like Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Su Tong and Eileen Chang.

There are also 3,000 children's books, including award-winning picture books. Like other branches, the Nanjing bookshop also offers 2,000 books on local culture and nature, including the Tangshan Hill, minerals and rocks, and architecture and hot springs.