Owspace bookstore is Beijing’s cultural hub

One-Way Street Library in Beijing has become a cultural landmark with many big-name Chinese artists hosting events at the space. [Photo provided to China Daily]

For almost 10 years, Owspace has been a place for China's creative minds to meet, read and discuss. Xing Yi looks back on an institution.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, 50 francophiles crowded into the salon area of Owspace bookstore to listen to two authors discuss their latest book, Cinema Francais.

The audience listened and asked questions while enjoying drinks and desserts provided at the bar in the store. Customers could join the crowd as they browsed.

It was a typical weekend activity for Owspace, better known by it's previous name One-Way Street Library, which is located on the fifth floor of the commercial complex Chaoyang Joy City in east Beijing. The store has hosted more than 700 cultural salons since its first poetry reading in March 2006.

In the past decade, the bookstore has gradually become a cultural landmark in Beijing with many big-name Chinese artists hosting events at the space, including Nobel laureate Mo Yan, poet Xi Chuan, painter Chen Danqing and film director Jia Zhangke.

"Not all of the salons are full," says Xiao Fei, who has worked at the store since 2011.

"We have also held events that appeal only to a small number of people, such as meeting directors of independent documentaries or writers of smaller readerships."

The bookstore was founded in 2006 by a group of writers, journalists and scholars in a yard within the Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, an imperial seasonal resort destroyed in 1860 by British and French forces.