Wanted: A lively bookshop for a stranger in Beijing

There are many ways to remember a city－by its unique architecture, or its museums, or the aromas of street food, but for me, my favorite way is to catalog special bookstores in my memory.

And though I'm still new to Beijing, only five months vintage, I already have fond memories of a bookstore.

So close and yet cut off from the dazzling shopping district of Sanlitun, where if you pause for too long to stare at the shops, you are sure to encounter touts luring you with "ladies massage" or a "ladies bar", there was this cozy corner called the Bookworm.

After ambling through the shops in Sanlitun, I would head to the Bookworm, where I'd hang my bag and jacket on a hook, order a lasagna or fish and chips, and a ginger ale and park myself next to the piano in the outer room.

From a shelf full of lending books, I would pick up a tome; on my first visit I selected one that most accurately described me, Colin McCullough's Stranger in China. As I read through McCullough's account of his experience in Beijing, I was aware also of the lively atmosphere behind me, as young people dressed in their weekend best met for dates or reached out to total strangers with the introductory "Are you here alone?"

In an adjacent room, there would occasionally be a raucous stand-up comedy act, which must have been fun to watch.

Otherwise, it was all peaceful, and I would order my food and drinks and immerse myself in Tariq Ali's Night of The Golden Butterfly or McCullough's Stranger in China, or alternate between the two books while digging into smoked salmon.

There was a third, much quieter, room inside, where once, while tipping my head back to take one last gulp from my glass, my eyes chanced upon a book titled Ciao Asmara, about the city where I had spent much of my childhood. The word ciao soon proved to be prophetic, however it wasn't ciao to Asmara, but ciao to the Bookworm. Two days later, the bookstore's management announced that Bookworm was soon to be shut down.

They organized a musical evening as a farewell to bring closure. And with that send-off I felt like I had been shortchanged－from feeling more like a Beijinger to being more like a stranger in Beijing, on the lookout again for another cozy and yet noisy place, full of books and booklovers.

There is something about bookshops that always draws me in.

Maybe it isn't just the books, for I have books at home, too. And sometimes I read them too. But every time I enter a bookshop, and if it's buzzing with life, I forget all my worries.

Even if I had to walk briskly in the cold, all the way from the Tuanjiehu subway station, once I was inside Bookworm, my feet didn't feel tired anymore. In fact, I had just to enter a bookshop and my mind would be at peace as I flipped through pages of one book here, another book there.

I'd look up if Gone With the Wind still began by describing Scarlett O'Hara as not particularly beautiful and, a little later, how she had the smallest waist in several counties; if clock hands joined palms in respectful greeting to welcome Saleem Sinai in the opening lines of Midnight's Children.

There are also books that I have read mostly in bookshops and then brought them home, never to flip another page.

But ever since the Bookworm shut down last month, life has not been the same anymore. Yes, it was fun visiting every floor of the Wangfujing Bookstore, and a week later the Beijing Foreign Languages Bookstore nearby, but it didn't feel the same.

The Bookworm was more than a place where one could just sit and read. It was like a theater, a library, a restaurant and a bar, all rolled into one. It offered something for everyone.

Running out of places to go, I, stayed indoors one evening, and on picking up an old favorite, the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's short stories, came across the exact lines that reflected my mood, in his story Zaabalawi: "Oh what's become of the world, Zaabalawi? They've turned it upside down and taken away its taste."