Friday Photos Bookshop in Shanghai

Last year we had the opportunity to visit Shanghai, it was long before the virus. I had mixed feelings about it but ended up enjoying myself. With my allergies and a language and alphabet that was very unfamiliar to me I felt justified in feeling nervous. As it turned out I was fine. The food was lovely and the people there really looked after us. We were picked up at the airport and our very patient driver waited while we got local sim cards.

At one stage we were trying to figure out the machines to buy train tickets. A lovely gentleman with less English than I have Mandarin stopped to try and help us. I thought that was very thoughtful of him. Thank goodness a lovely lady also stopped. Her English was almost as good as mine and she helped us to buy two tickets. Thanking both of them we got on a train. One of our train journeys was stressful for me. I have little sense of navigation and I missed my train, my Travelling Companion managed to get on it and was able to send me a message telling me which train to take and where to get off. Thank goodness for local sims. But how this happened is their excellent train system which keeps to a strict timetable, with markings on the platform telling you where to stand. If you don’t stand in the right place ready to move on then you’re likely to do what I did and miss the train as they don’t wait. I only had a short wait until the next train…I did say the train system is excellent, didn’t I? Apart from getting tickets the first time that was the worst problem we had in our entire trip.

But what I really want to talk about is the bookshop we came across. We did a lot of walking around Shanghai, we did take some trains as well but we wanted to walk and see things. Along the way we came across a bookshop. Naturally, I went in.

Here we have the outside. It was almost 5:30 pm according to the time stamp on my photo. From the photo it appears the sun was going down but I have no memory of that. The lights were on, the door was open and it felt very welcoming.

This shelf was near the door. I got all excited. I’m not sure if they’re textbooks or propaganda but I was excited. Being honest, it doesn’t matter to me what they are, not my country, not my problem. But there is more.

These look like dictionaries to me. I love dictionaries at the best of times and feel I have to restrain myself from taking photos for the blog. This time I didn’t restrain myself.

Near the books that remind me of dictionaries was this lovely little shelf. Just sitting down on the top of the shelf, but near ground level; I noticed the gorgeous covers. I had to look further. As you can see they are four books from the DC world of movies.

This next photo shows in the inside of the Aquaman book. Most of the books were shrinkwrapped, I took advantage of this one which wasn’t and opened it at a random page. Managed to, mostly, keep my finger out of shot, tactfully ignore smidgeon at the bottom. Please notice the dual language. I thought this would be good for people learning English. I wonder if it would be good for people learning Chinese? Maybe I should have bought.

Just another random photo because I got excited.

It was a large shop, well laid out and the shelves weren’t too high. It made it hard for me to get lost and easy for my Travelling Companion to find me. But I still managed to see most of the aisles. Just before we left the shop there was a little shop-within-the-shop which held arts and crafts and other useful things. I would have loved to have bought some of the paintbrushes, they were beautiful…I did have to remind myself of the reams of paintbrushes I have at home that I rarely use.