Shanghai's bookshops and stationery shops: the least obvious hour you will spend indoors

Bookshops and stationery shops are Shanghai’s least conspicuous places to spend time. Nobody puts them in an itinerary and tourist information barely mentions them, yet a visitor who browses bookshops and buys paper and pens at home can lose more hours here than at most attractions. They cover two practical cases: a wet day, and the first day after landing, when the time difference has not settled. Seats, light, no booking.

Why this deserves a guide of its own

Shanghai’s bookshops have range: the multi-floor general shop laid out by category, the small independent shop carrying a few hundred titles, the bookshop inside an art museum. Stationery is more direct: Chinese stationery is good value, and one ordinary shop sells brushes, ink, paper, seals and modern paper goods under one roof.

Visitors are rarely told this: tourist information prefers attractions and restaurants. A bookshop is not an attraction, charges no admission and photographs badly, so it stays off the itinerary, and it is exactly right for a wet afternoon or a day lost to flying.

The bookshops, by what they are for

The large multi-floor general bookshop. Several floors divided by category: fiction, history, social science, lifestyle, children’s, art, study aids. It works as an indoor book city: one category seen whole, plus titles a small shop would not stock. The cost is crowds and mainstream selection, with bestsellers and exam material taking the space. Whether it deserves an hour depends on how finely the shelves are divided.

The independent shop with a curated shelf. Small, few books, each chosen by a person; its value is not completeness but that somebody has already looked. These shops often run a cafe and lean towards fiction, art and independent publishing, so whether you find anything depends on how far your interests overlap with the owner’s.

The bookshop inside a museum or gallery. The stock follows the collection and the current exhibition: catalogues, artists’ monographs, architecture and design, children’s books. The most underrated category in the city: quiet, tied to what you have just seen, effectively a second pass over the exhibition.

Second-hand and antiquarian stalls. Second-hand bookshops, book stalls inside flea markets, occasional book fairs: old editions, magazines, maps, postcards and comic books. Good for browsing, bad for hunting a specific title; condition and authenticity are yours to judge, and here the price can still be negotiated.

The foreign-language and art-book sections of the big shops. A large shop usually gives a floor or a corner to foreign-language titles and another block to art and design; those two are the real foothold for a reader without Chinese. The art section is mostly picture-led, so the language barrier is low; the foreign section is mostly English titles, limited in range.

The bookshop as a place to sit and work. Some have a cafe, long tables, sockets and wifi and work as a quiet public workspace; a laptop and two hours is normal.

The honest note about language

Most of the stock is in Chinese. The foreign-language section exists, but it is usually one corner of a floor, or two shelves, and modest in range.

For a reader without Chinese, half the value is the books and half the space and design: how the shelves are built, how the light falls, how you move through the room, how one book is displayed. Several of the best bookshops here are interior design pieces in their own right, worth walking through even if you buy nothing.

The categories you can actually buy in are limited:

• Art, design, photography, architecture. Albums and monographs are mostly image, little text, and work by looking. The safest purchase of the lot.
• Children’s picture books. The illustration is often strong, and the text short enough for pictures to carry it.
• The translated fiction shelf. World literature in Chinese translation, often better made than the English edition.
• Postcards, notebooks, posters and design goods. Not books, but the same kind of purchase, and the easiest to carry.

The rest, Chinese fiction, history and social science, is weight unless you read Chinese.

Stationery: the stronger half of the recommendation

Bookshops are worth looking at. Stationery shops are worth buying in.

Chinese stationery is good value: the same notebooks, pens and paper usually cost less than in most European or North American cities, and quality is not worse. A good shop is also a supplier for brush painting and calligraphy: brushes, bottled ink and solid ink sticks, xuan paper and practice paper, inkstones, seal stone and carving tools, seal paste, alongside notebooks, tape, fountain pens and coloured ink.

One point deserves its own line: the four treasures of the study (brush, ink, paper, inkstone) are sold in ordinary stationery and calligraphy shops, not only in tourist outlets. The cultural shops in visitor areas sell them too, at a higher price, with less choice and mostly as boxed sets. People who actually write and paint use the ordinary shop: a brush by the piece, paper by the bundle, ink by the stick.

By category:

• Brushes. Graded by spring, length and tip. Do not buy an expensive one first; a mid-range mixed-hair brush is enough.
• Ink. Bottled ink is ready to use; ink sticks are ground, but keep, travel and make good presents.
• Paper. Xuan paper comes raw or processed, sold by the bundle; practice paper is cheap in quantity. Easiest to carry, hardest to get wrong.
• Seal stone. Priced by stone type, size and quality. The stone is modest; the carving is a second charge.
• Carving. A carver in the shop or nearby cuts to order, which takes time; decide the content first, write the characters clearly, and hand over the paper.
• Modern paper goods. Notebooks, planners, tape, fountain pens and coloured ink: the easier half to carry.

The art-supply shop extends this line. Shanghai has a genuine one, not two shelves attached to a stationer: canvas, paint, brushes, printmaking tools, drawing paper, mounting materials. A non-artist should still go, for the tools themselves and for one or two cheap, flat things.

What to buy that travels

• Paper. A full bundle is heavy; a small stack of practice paper or a few good sheets is practical.
• Notebooks. Thread-bound or paperback, good paper, light, and they survive packing.
• A brush and ink. Protect the brush head; most come with a cap, and ink sticks travel far better than bottles.
• A seal, and the carving of it. Small, light, one of a kind, and the closest thing to an object that could only have come from Shanghai.
• Postcards and old printed pictures. Cheap, flat, no space taken.
• Ink bottles are a packing risk. Glass, liquid, prone to leaking and crushing. If you take one, wrap it well, put it in checked luggage, and keep it away from pale clothes and books. Most people end up with an ink stick.

The practical part, customs, and who should skip it

A bookshop is a legitimate place to spend an hour without buying anything. Most large shops do not require a purchase, and sitting and reading is normal; a shop with a cafe expects one drink, and some let you sit for an afternoon.

A bag of books is heavy: do not plan a long walk for the day you buy them; leave the buying to the last day. Opening hours vary and change, so check before you go; no hours or names here.

On customs, two things. Anything with a blade, including carving knives, is a carry-on problem and must go in checked luggage. Seal stone, paper, wood, bamboo and dried flowers are plant and mineral materials that may be subject to inspection or declaration; the rules depend on the destination country, differ between countries, and no quantities or limits are given here. Check your own country’s customs or agriculture guidance before you travel.

Who it suits: anyone who likes books, paper, writing and drawing; anyone with a wet day and nowhere to be; anyone who wants something cheap, light and hard to buy too much of; anyone with a child to find picture books for.

Who can skip it: anyone with a packed schedule moving only between attractions; anyone looking for a “Shanghai souvenir”, which this kind of shop does not supply; anyone expecting a large English-language bookshop.

What disappoints, honestly. The beautiful shop with nothing worth buying is real: the space is resolved, the light is excellent, the coffee is taken more seriously than the books, and the selection is ordinary. The cultural shop on a tourist street is the second: the same object in every shop, at a much higher price, with packaging worth more than the contents. The third matters most: the best paper is usually in a plain shop, an ordinary frontage, white fluorescent light, stock stacked to the ceiling, an owner who knows nothing about design and everything about paper.