There are new discoveries every time I visit Shanghai. People opt for a greener transport mode, riding on bicycles at every corner of the streets. This prevalence is due to Mobike, a bike-sharing service allowing people to rent a bicycle parked at anywhere in the city at RMB0.50 for half an hour. With the mobile app, users only need to scan a QR-code on the bicycle, pay the rent online and enjoy the ride before returning it to anywhere possible. It is also convenient that the mobile app has a map showing where all the bicycles for rent are located. 

I cycled from Fuxing West Road, Shanghai’s most beautiful boulevard, to Wukang Road, a district that boasts many superb coffee shops. The Chinese parasol trees on the sides of the boulevard are bare without any signs of leaves, but the trees are in good shape with sturdy branches and trunks, alike the untamed Chinese semi-cursive script that are gracefully drawn on the sky. 

My ride came to Jing’an District, an area brimming with many new residential projects and the most expensive land sites in the city, but quite many interesting shops have opened in recent years. The Paramount described in Pai Hsien-yung’s classic novel The Last Night of Madam Chin was one of the most extravagant nightclubs in Shanghai, but it has become a more modish place following a revamp. A design store that has been lately discussed a lot in WeChat, Wondullful Dept is composed of a coffee shop, a design select shop and an exhibition space. On the first floor, there is a simplistic, industrial-style coffee shop AUNN, featuring a spacious area and delectable coffee. Its corky cups for takeaway are stylish and practical, and won’t scald your hands (They seem not too environmentally-friendly, though). Wondullful design select shop is located on the second floor, consisting of more than 1,500 design items selected from around the world, including rubbish bins, fragrances and kitchenware, in the 400-square-meter area. Among the items, some are designed with a sense of humour to make you laugh at home every day. An exhibition space is found on the third floor. 

A number of upscale department stores are also situated in this district, such as Réel Mall, where the so-called most beautiful bookstore in China can be found—Zhongshuge Bookstore. Its splendid interior design is a crowd-puller but this seems preposterous and illogical, because books alone should be captivating enough to draw the crowd without any gimmicks. Both paper books and bookstores have been placed in an existential predicament, so the operators have to exhaust all means for their bookstores to gain a foothold in this frantic Internet era. 

Zhongshuge Bookstore has been one of the fastest growing bookstore chains in China in the past few years, with outlets in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Yangzhou and other cities. The interior design of its stores, requiring large sums of investments, has garnered a lot of interests from the public. Zhongshuge Bookstore in Shanghai is located within a department store in the most lavish district of the city. Adjacent to many luxury brands, the location of the bookstore shows knowledge bears no difference from luxury goods. 

Occupying a sizable floor space, the hall of Zhongshuge Bookstore adopts a simplistic style with bright lighting and white colour. The lighting will get warmer when walking deeper into the maze-like bookstore, which simply showcases all types of books. Mirrors are also installed on the ceiling to make the space look more vast and dazzling. The books are categorised in accordance with their themes so that visitors could promptly find the books they want. There is one section called “Books by Selected Chinese Publishers”, allowing me to find my favourite books in a convenient and effortless manner. Engaged in the publication industry, I feel it like an instinct to buy paper books in bookstores. Although it is convenient and low-cost to buy books from online stores in China, only will there be possibilities of finding an interesting book when you are shopping in brick and mortar. 

Leaving the bookstore, I enjoyed dim sum at a nearby fast-food restaurant, Taoyuan Village, which is stylishly designed and caters soymilk, youtiao (Chinese cruller) and egg pancake rolls. These are all ordinary snacks in daily life but prepared with a sophisticated touch here. Acclaimed for its old Taiwanese style, the owner of Taoyuan Village is a Chinese, though. In its low-key, Chinese-style setting, you finish your soymilk and promptly delve into the art world with a sentence emerging from the bottom of the soymilk bowl: “I am willing to grind off my entire life for you”. Sentences like “Taste of time” are also found on the walls appealing to the likings of hipsters. In spite of its average pricing and taste, this restaurant chain is still gaining strong traction in China with branches in all major cities. These show a nice ambience with good old memories could still win hearts of many people. I bet the designer or owner of the store like to read books; otherwise, how could he or she open such a store?