RAYS OF HOPE from a hidden book trove

Qian felt that just one person, Huang Yinwu, appreciated both the beauty and the feasibility of his idea. Huang was thus invited to restore the two old buildings and transform them into useful space for a bookshop. Three years later, when people returned, they found two totally different buildings.

Part of the tiles on the eastern and western slanting roofs of the granary were replaced with two rows of glass that run parallel to one another, so that natural light can shine through.

"When I was there, the renovation had not been completed, but I could tell what it would look like when the work was done," says the writer A Yi, who visited the bookshop last September.

"Its main feature is the natural lighting, which borrows the idea from the Parthenon in Athens. If you sit in the bookshop from morning to evening you can see the sunlight moving, gradually shining through one glass pane after another. You can literally feel the change of time, so it would be really cozy there."

The design is smart and discreet, he says, without breaking the granary's original structure but creating a new space.

"In general I didn't make much change to the original structure," Huang says. "The key is how to transform the existing space of the old granary into an atmosphere of a modern bookshop."

Huang, 46, has been living in and working on the restoration of Shaxi for more than 20 years on and off.

Such a design complies with Librairie Avant-Garde's other village bookshops, A Yi says.

"They don't go to a place to build a new house, but to use and renovate an existing old house, and melt their essence into the local culture."

The design adds a new cafe to the 700-square meter yard, also using the local construction style, so it is not difficult for it to blend in the village, Huang says.