When cities around China were locked down because of COVID-19, bookshops struggled to survive by selling products online. Celebrated ones such as One-Way Street Bookstore in Beijing called the public for help, calls that seem to have fallen on enough sympathetic ears to give the shops cause for optimism. However, for many other bookshops whose profits had been razor thin even before the virus appeared, and notwithstanding their efforts to drum up business online, the future does not seem as rosy.

Against that backdrop, when the Shaxi Bai Ethnic Bookstore opened in May, those who heard the news or went there were both amazed and worried.

Qian says that since the opening on May 1 the shop has had more visitors than it had expected, "visitors from Shanxi province, Sichuan province, Taiwan, Guangzhou, and so on".

Liu Yating, 28, manager of the bookshop, agrees. A team of four people run the shop from 10 am to 7 pm. The number of visitors usually increases after 11 am.

Besides tourists, villagers make up another main group of visitors to the bookshop, older people and children in particular. The best-selling products are books, accounting for more than half of current sales, Liu says.