http:\/\/www.kongfz.com\/index.php<\/a>) is a bit like Biblio with which many of you might be more familiar. The site claims to be: \u5168\u7403\u6700\u5927\u7684\u4e2d\u6587\u65e7\u4e66\u7f51\u7ad9 Its constantly growing database renders easily searchable the holdings of literally thousands of bookshops in all corners of the PRC, large and perhaps surprisingly minuscule. Indeed, what I found when I went looking for one of these ‘shops’ in Chengdu was the owner and his brother having a quiet lunch in their sparsely furnished flat, while each room in the flat across the landing was overflowing with the books they had for sale. The booksellers themselves maintain their own online databases and many seem to add new books daily, as well as sell books daily, so there’s a bit of urgency sometimes to reserve what interests you the moment you see it as the next day it may already have been sold.<\/p>\nMost of the books on offer are out of print, published over the last two decades or so, (as print runs were generally quite small), but what’s available goes well beyond such more purely secondary sources. Many published collections of archival materials as well as \u5730\u65b9\u8a8c both old and new and other collections of original materials are available for sometimes widely varying prices, as well as reprints of Qing or Republican era books. Among the items I’ve purchased was a \u6cb9\u5370\u672c version of a book which original a certain library in Chengdu was only grudgingly willing to let me see, but certainly not photocopy or even photograph.<\/p>\n
Original copies of some Republican and even Qing books also are listed on Kongfz, though the prices tend to be a bit high. Overall, the cost of most books is quite reasonable, but purchases can only be made in China as Kongfz has no online purchase facility; rather you must first make a deposit into the bookseller’s bank account and then wait for the books to arrive. Through quite a few orders, I’ve only had one small problem, and the ratings for each shop are quite high, so it seems overall quite a reliable service. And indeed extremely helpful for research. Check it out once in a while and you might just find that book that all your Chinese colleagues and friends have referred to but until now\u00a0has been maddeningly elusive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The book markets and used bookstores of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and pretty much everywhere in between; their dusty piles of colourful, frayed cultural revolution cartoon books interspersed with old dictonaries, Mao buttons, and piles of post-liberation \u6a94\u6848 or pre-liberation photos… This is undoubtedly a scene those of us researching or studying in China have passed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100,165,119,126,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-china","category-english","category-general","category-web-sites-and-resources"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-2v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5030,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions\/5030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}