(Source: CGTN)

April 23rd marks World Reading Day. As online bookstores have come to dominate the market, traditional physical bookstores have been on the decline. But a new way to open and run a physical bookstore or book café has been on the rise in China: Crowd-funding.

An underground parking lot is now a bookstore. This is a crowd-funded venture opened in February in Taiyuan, capital of north China’s Shanxi Province. Owner Lu Hongren is a graduate of a local university. He raised two million yuan, about 300,000 US dollars, in crowd-funding from over one hundred people through the WeChat social networking app. Lu says crowd-funding is not just about raising money.

"More importantly, the crowd-funding has helped me get to know lots of people in the cultural circle, which is important to my bookstore," Lu said.

Lu’s bookstore covers 12-hundred square meters and has over 20,000 volumes.

This is a crowd-funded venture opened in February in Taiyuan, capital of north China’s Shanxi Province. Owner Lu Hongren is a graduate of a local university.

Lu Hongren says his bookstore has been making good profits. The monthly turnover is up to 400,000 yuan, half of it from book sales. His sales strategy is offering discounts.

"In order to compete with online bookstores, we are offering the same discounts as Dangdang-dot-come or Jingdong-dot-com, which are about 30% off on average," Lu said.

Lu’s bookstore is one of many crowd-funded bookstores that are rising in China. While some cultural experts argue that bookstores shouldn’t be too commercialized, some say commercialization is an effective way to promote a reading culture.

"I think the commercialization and diversity of running a physical bookstore will ultimately promote the development of bookstores, engaging more people in reading books. It will definitely help to increase the cultural sense of society," said Li Junhu, vice president of Shanxi Writers Association.