Bookstore Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Kerouac, I am the librarian of Rhine Bookstore, and I am a Maine Coon cat.

In 1960, Jack Kerouac, a writer of the American "Beat Generation", wrote "Ever youthful, ever weeping" at the end of his famous novel "Dharma Bums", which translated into Chinese is the slogan on the front page of Rhine Bookstore. This sentence is well translated, and for a long time, it even became the motto of a group of idealistic young people in China.

Of course, this sentence also reflects the temperament of our bookstore.

Therefore, we divide the bookstore into three sections:
Look at the ideal: social science/art/literature; look at the reality: tools/skills/management; chat time: what books are we reading recently, and what books we want to talk about for readers with different preferences to choose.

Chinese readers living in Europe are actually a very special group: international students, first and second generation immigrants, work visa expatriates, Chinese language researchers... The founders of Rhine Bookstore are two 30-year-olds who find it difficult to feel value in their current jobs. One settled in Germany and worked, got off work at 4 o'clock every day, but was bored; the other started a business in the United States, worked 16 hours a day, and lived like a dog. For them and most Chinese readers in Europe, these books carry a special meaning, in addition to reading the world, perceiving the heart, and improving oneself. That is the joy of being good at Chinese and having an intimate understanding of Chinese. We say that books are the last refuge for humans, which may be the main reason for them to open this bookstore... and the bookshelf is just one of the choices for cats. I have lived in one of the shelves of a large bookshelf for a long time. Due to my livelihood, I was responsible for the daily management of this bookstore. I am 2 years old this year, but I always feel old. This has something to do with the breed. Some cats are born with vicissitudes.

Let's talk about the "Beat Generation". A while ago, students at Columbia University launched an event to protest the permissive attitude of American educational institutions towards Israel. Many of the school administrators who ordered the students to do so were outstanding representatives of the "Beat Generation" of the same generation as Jack Kerouac. They rebelled against authority, the Vietnam War, and pursued self-realization... 50 years have passed, and they are facing a group of students with the same purpose, asking them to behave well...

But it is gratifying that there are always a group of young people who are on the "road". They are always young and always inexplicably excited. 95% of their time is occupied by busyness and anxiety. But for the 5% of extremely pleasant time, they are willing to bear the 95% cost and do not care about the input-output ratio.

I hope this bookstore can help you resist that 95% of time. I also hope that by managing this bookstore and communicating with you, I can make myself younger.

Let me use a very common quote to summarize the bookstore introduction: Many years later, when Kerouac, the bookstore manager and Maine Coon cat, is cleaning up old books, he will remember that distant morning when the bookstore owner took him to pack the first book sold.

October 2024 in Germany