One of my favorite hobbies is reading books! A lot of people might not know this about me, but I grew up reading all kinds of different novels. In the past few years, I’ve done a lot more exploration of translated cultural novels. Some of my favorite authors are Haruki Murakami, Wei Hui, and Ruth Ozeki.
I always spend a lot of time browsing through bookstores in Shanghai. On second thought, visiting local bookstores is a constant motif through out my travels, because I think there is almost no better place to read a book about a specific place for the first time than the city itself! Shanghai, like many other asian cities has a lot of various “bookstores” in the residential neighborhoods. However, these are actually more of student bookstores- selling mainly textbooks, workbooks, and stationary. Most of the bigger bookstores can be found in shopping districts and the upper levels of malls.
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