Two friends had been clamoring about a book store in Taipei that was chosen as one of the top twenty best bookstores in the world. I decided to tag along as I spent the last week in a whole lot of book stores looking for some chinese books I want. So no doubt this book store would have them since it's a top twenty best in the world.
When i got there I was severely underwhelmed. It is basically about 30% books, and 70% old hardware and other junk from america. The store looks more like a yard sale, but instead of the things being 25cents, they were 50bucks up to 500.
I actually got quite upset at myself, as long have i thought about getting junk from america and selling it here for astronomical prices. For example they have a bunch of old wooden rulers that were selling for around 25 bucks. Rulers that we got for free in school because they advertised not doing drugs and things like that. One that i picked up was for not starting forest fires.
I was recounting to my friend how as a kid in school since they were free we would stack them together and see how many we could karate chop. Granted we were stupid kids and we didn't know that the more we destroyed, the more it would drive up the price of these on the other side of the world.
But alas my bitterness stems from me not getting my butt in gear and doing something similar. I also calmed down when i researched it and found out that it was the list of the top twenty most beautiful book stores, not the the best.
For those of you curious, I do suggest you type that into google and take a look. some of the other bookstores are incredible, and actually makes me wonder how this one actually did make the list. That's actually not jealousy talking, i think you will see what i mean if you take a look at the pictures of the other stores.
For my money the best looking bookstores in taipei are gone. there used to be a row of old bookstores filled to the brim with books by a local university. just the type of small mom and pop shop that you'd go to once a week to find a hidden gem. they were really quaint.
Actually recently I've been watching some Taiwanese movies from around 10-15 years old, and watching them it's amazing to see how things have changed in this city in such a short time. i'd like to figure out a way to get some before and after shots. i also have a learning chinese video series made by that university and those videos are about 12 years old and in them you can sometimes see those bookstores. I guess I'm an officially and old man now that I always say things were better in the past.
