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| JF Books will open in Washington, D.C. | |
Jifeng, a landmark Shanghai bookstore that was shut down by authorities six years ago, is reopening September 1 in Washington, D.C., as JF Books, the South China Morning Post reported. The bookshop, which had been popular with Shanghai's liberal intelligentsia for its wide range of academic titles and seminars, will be located in DuPont Circle at 1509 Connecticut Ave. NW. (The site is on the same block as Kramers.)
"After six years, in a new country, we have dedicated our hearts and souls to restart Jifeng and bring the only Chinese bookstore to Washington D.C.," owner Yu Miao said in a WeChat post.
Jifeng was founded in 1997 by Yan Bofei and "quickly found a market for its range of political, history and philosophy titles, expanding to eight branches around Shanghai at its peak," the Morning Post noted. The stores also hosted talks by a number of leading academics in the humanities and social sciences.
By the time Yu bought a majority stake in the bookstore in 2013, Jifeng was already under pressure. Authorities had stepped up ideological controls under Xi Jinping, who became Communist Party chief in 2012 and president of China the following year. Three branches had to close over costs and accusations by authorities that they did not have a license. The main location was shuttered in January 2018 after being denied a lease renewal. Yu and his family subsequently moved to Florida.
In his recent post, Yu said Jifeng had hosted more than 800 seminars in the five years before it closed, and the tradition would continue at the new store in Washington. JF Books will sell Chinese humanities and social science books published in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as English-language books on China and Asia--many of which are unavailable in mainland Chinese bookstores due to strict censorship.