Rural bookstore shares story of Tibetan culture

About 7 years ago, 33-year-old Tsering Dondrub, a concern proprietor successful Shangri-La county, Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture successful Southwest China’s Yunnan province, purchased 3 accepted Tibetan houses successful Wugong village, Xiaozhongdian municipality of the county, a half-hour thrust from downtown area.

The 3 freestanding houses built astir fractional a period agone had been unused for 5 years and would support this presumption for different 3 years until a bookstore marque moved successful for its caller branch.

Shangri-La was a cardinal staging station successful the Yunnan-Xizang subdivision of the Ancient Tea-Horse Caravan Route, a commercialized way that started successful the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and prospered successful the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) connecting Pu’er successful Yunnan with Lhasa successful today’s Xizang autonomous region.

Tsering Dondrub has been moving the concern of making and selling accepted Tibetan products some online and successful shops since 2009. By 2021, with integrated businesses, including agrarian tourism, robust products and taste taste products, helium has seen revenues transcend 7 cardinal yuan (£750,030).

He bought the 3 aged houses 7 years ago, not acold from a reservoir, with plans to renovate them into hostels. However, by 2020, Tsering Dondrub had inactive not recovered a spouse who was consenting to renovate the 3 houses, which different would beryllium torn down.

In May 2020, Chinese bookstore marque Librairie Avant-Garde, headquartered successful Nanjing, Jiangsu province, opened its caller subdivision successful a colony successful Shaxi past municipality of Dali Bai autonomous prefecture, Yunnan. Its laminitis Qian Xiaohua and rotating president Zhang Ruifeng soon started looking for different opportunities successful the province.

When Tsering Dondrub archetypal showed them the 3 ramshackle Tibetan houses, they were rather impressed, but determination were dozens of specified houses nearby. A twelvemonth later, erstwhile they viewed the houses again, Qian decided to rent them. They invited designer Zhao Yang to plan the renovation plan.

Zhao, a postgraduate of Tsinghua University and Harvard University, is present based successful Dali. For years, helium has been trying to enactment his architectural idealism into signifier — to speech to quality with an unfastened mind.

In 2022, erstwhile Zhao archetypal saw the 3 rundown Tibetan houses lasting successful the field, helium says helium felt that the spot fitted the bookstore’s marque ethos.

Typical of accepted Tibetan houses successful Shangri-La, the 3 houses represented the architectural strategy established by radical who had lived determination for hundreds of years.

Zhao was amazed to find that the woody operation of the 3 houses is antithetic from those of the houses of the Han radical successful their gathering logic.

In the woody operation of a Han house, the pillars connected the crushed and archetypal floors are often a azygous portion of wood. However, the pillars connected the crushed level of a Tibetan location were shorter, much slender and simpler than those connected the archetypal floor. The crushed level was inhabited by livestock and the archetypal level by people.

“That is fascinating for an designer similar me, who grew up with a modern architectural education. I spot it arsenic a precious anthropological bequest that we should cautiously preserve,” helium says.

The 3 houses were renovated for antithetic purposes — books, java and originative taste products.

“We tried our champion to sphere each the woody structures successful the archetypal space,” Zhao says.

“We made the smallest changes to the interior structure, truthful the archetypal level of the cafe is similar a depository of the accepted residences successful Shangri-La. We lifted the extortion to fto airy successful and brighten the residence.”

Offering a presumption of the Haba Snow Mountain crossed the Jinsha River, the precocious watercourse of the Yangtze River, the bookstore houses 15,000 books connected humanities and societal sciences and 100 types of originative taste products with section elements. Readers tin besides find books astir section cultures, geography, languages and history.

“It’s large that determination are truthful galore books astir Tibetans and Shangri-La astatine the bookstore. These books tin link antithetic cultures,” Tsering Dondrub says.