Brief (coffeeyo.com): Under the dome of the Shanghai Exhibition Center on a weekend, crowds streamed through the book fair, but the literary atmosphere was not confined by walls — it spilled from the main venue and flowed along winding streets such as Maoming North Road and Xiangyang South Road. During the Shanghai Book Fair, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House and thirteen citywide coffee shops jointly built “urban reading corners,” an extension of the fair.
On a weekend beneath the dome of the Shanghai Exhibition Center, crowds flowed through the book fair, but the literary atmosphere was not confined by walls — it spilled from the main venue and flowed along winding streets such as Maoming North Road and Xiangyang South Road. During the Shanghai Book Fair, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House and thirteen citywide coffee shops jointly built “urban reading corners,” an extension of the fair.
The bookshelf at Moon Coffee.
In the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, on social media one can scroll past dozens of fleeting pieces of information; yet in these thirteen coffee shops, the same cup of coffee is enough time for a person to encounter a good book by chance. The rules of the activity are simple: during the book fair, visit any partner coffee shop and buy two books — all books are offered at a 40% discount — and you receive a designated coffee redemption voucher or a half-price voucher. Literature and coffee are bound together so concretely, as if telling every rushing urbanite: now, stop, drink a cup of coffee, turn a page of a book.
With the booklet, visitors can redeem stickers at the Shanghai Translation Publishing House booth at the Shanghai Book Fair.
Moon Coffee retro on Maoming North Road takes its name from that classic sci-fi film, and details related to the “moon” can be seen everywhere in the shop; its actual space is under twenty square meters — warm, compact, like a just-right coffee cup. This self-roasting specialty café was born on Children’s Day in 2014 and now has two spaces, “retro” and “Green House,” and the retro shop happens to be within walking distance of the Shanghai Exhibition Center, becoming the preferred resting spot for many book-fair readers after the event ends.
Moon Coffee.
Step into Moon Coffee and you will find the bookshelf’s selections carry a distinct personality — because part of the curation power was handed to the barista Rika. She picked Yoshimoto Banana’s “Daisy Life” and “Kitchen,” Niimi Eto’s “Travel Is to Find the Way Home,” and the picture book “The Afternoon of Langhans Island” co-created by Haruki Murakami and Mizumaru Anzai. Asked about her criteria, Rika said: “These works are light and healing, perfect for flipping through casually over a coffee.”
It turned out her intuition matched customers’ reading tastes strikingly well. Only two days after the fair opened, Moon Coffee had sold 18 books, with “Daisy Life” and “Kitchen” especially popular — so popular it needed emergency restocking; two sets of the new “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” dog-commemorative gift box also sold, with one customer buying it specially as a gift for a friend. This left Rika both surprised and slightly regretful — “I didn’t know these books were for sale; if I had, I might have been bolder in my choices.”
Ms. He, sitting at the bar drinking coffee, was a reader who had returned laden with books from the Shanghai Book Fair. Her big bag held Shen Yifei’s new book, yet her eyes were still drawn to the Yoshimoto Banana titles in the shop. Interestingly, during last year’s fair she also came to Moon Coffee to rest after the event; returning this year, she seems to have built her own annual ritual between the book fair and the café.
The fragrance of coffee and books blend together.
But Moon Coffee is only one piece of a thirteen-piece puzzle. Walk along Xiangyang South Road to No. 272 and you meet a small white house — Bitter Donkey. This shop, whose menu highlights signature blended drinks, has a name that reveals a stubborn playfulness: built on the “Bitter” of tea and coffee, blended with the donkey-like persistent R&D spirit. Here too, buying two books earns a designated half-price coffee voucher. Bitter Donkey’s book-selection style differs slightly from Moon Coffee’s, yet equally reveals the owner’s unique understanding of literature. Thirteen shops, thirteen coffee flavors, thirteen book lists — scattered across different corners of Shanghai, they weave together an invisible literary network.
The meaning of this network goes far beyond promotion or traffic. Beyond the book fair, these coffee shops become miniature “literary corners,” letting those who never entered the Exhibition Center still meet literature when they push the door open on the street, and letting those who have already browsed widely gain new discoveries as they savor the aftertaste. Coffee shops inherently carry the social attributes of the city’s public space — the clink of ice cubes, the low conversation at the next table, the constant hum of the espresso machine — this everyday white noise forms the backdrop of reading.
Through the event’s online mini-program, Rika can also see the dynamics of the other twelve coffee shops. She noticed that several shops’ book picks were very close to her own, giving her a sense of tacit understanding across distance. Digital tools connect these scattered outposts, yet the real connection happens between people and books, and between people.
Beyond the book fair, literature is never absent — it hides on the bookshelf by the bar, in the activity manuals scattered on side tables, on sheets of lovely stickers. This summer, when you push the door into a coffee shop, order a cup of coffee and open a book, you answer, at your own pace, the city’s call to literature.
Source: Xinmin Evening News (author: Xu Yisheng).
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