TIANJIN: Towering accordion steps and a fantastical spiral staircase greet visitors to a massive bookstore in northern China’s Tianjin, where its striking interior is a bigger draw for selfie snappers than scholars.
Sales of hard-copy books across the country have failed to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, data shows, despite authorities’ efforts to boost domestic consumption and an e-commerce boom.
Yet in recent years the number of physical bookshops has “maintained steady growth”, the head of a publishing industry group said last January.