Chinese bookstores abroad show pow

Librairie le Phenix is one of the seven bookstores featured in the TV documentary Overseas Bookstores. Portraits of Chinese writers like Lu Xun, Bing Xin and Eileen Chang adorn the windows. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Yin herself remembers seeing portraits of famous Chinese writers Lu Xun, Bing Xin, Eileen Chang and Ba Jin on the windows of the Librairie le Phenix store in Boulevard Sebastopol, Paris.

When she visited Paris in 2013, she noticed locals acknowledge China's literary culture.

For the documentary, the TV crew chose seven representative stores: Librairie le Phenix and Librairie You Feng in Paris; Guanghwa in London; Uchiyama Bookstore in Tokyo; China Books and Periodicals in San Francisco and Chicago; China Books in Sydney and Melbourne; and Wenchang Bookstore in Sao Paulo.

In the 1960s, when China and the US didn't have formal relations, Americans who wanted to know about China would go to China Books and Periodicals, according to the documentary.

One of the best-sellers then was Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong. More than 1 million copies of the "little red book" sold at this store alone.

The store's founder, Henry Noyes, was born in southern China, after his grandparents brought modern education to the country and started the first middle school for girls in Guangzhou in the late 19th century.