Xisi Xinhua Bookstore – A Memory of a Generation
At the crossroad of Fucheng Men Nei Avenue and Xisi North Avenue, there is a two-story Chinese style building. The building is a branch of Xinhua Bookstore.
The building has a history more than 100 years. When the Empress Dowager planed her 60-year-old birthday celebration, she ordered to build several buildings for her to rest along the way from Forbidden City to Summer Palace. This one and its counterpart next to it were two of those buildings.
After 1949, the building at the northwest corner of the crossroad was chose as a site for Xinhua Bookstore. From then on, it became a collective memory of an entire generation. Beijing didn’t have too many bookstores at that time. This one located at a busy crossroad, and the scale was to some extent big in those years. The bookstore was famous for selling serial picture story books, favorites of children. Students, workers, intellectuals and outcomers left their traces inside the two-story building. The books they bought in the store reflected an era of China, and even the world.
In recent years, in order to construct the Subway Line 4, the Xinhua Bookstore had closed for a long time. Its counterpart changed into a branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China many years ago. The store still exists, after a reconstruction.
The Xinhua Bookstore at the crossroad is a symbol at the heart of Xicheng District. It is the memory of people leaving youth decades ago, and our legacy of knowledge and a classic scene of a city’s development.
Xisi Xinhua Bookstore in old days
The building victims changes of Xicheng area
