j.k. armstrong

When I went to Peking University, I’d often find these outdoor book vendors that would lay a tarp out on the sidewalk or a collapsible table and have boxes full of books in different languages, usually Simplified Chinese, English, and Japanese. There was one just outside the northwest gate, and another by the train station. They carried new and used legitimate books, and also some bootleg books (prints made after-hours, or which had issues making them unable to be sold). I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I read The Little Prince. I read a copy of Kafka on the Shore where the printer must have been running out of ink, because on some pages the typography was so light it was almost unreadable. One of the coziest experiences of my life, though, was buying one of those books and then finding a cafe to sit down and read it, and I miss being able to do that. I like books pretty much no matter what, I like the way pages feel and the way ink looks. But books with their own stories are my favorites, and all those books on those tarps and tables had stories to them.