Q：Why is it a feminist bookstore?
I used to work in the real estate industry for more than ten years, and I obviously feel misogyny in the industry. So I want to open a feminist bookstore to help women realize their current situation. Ninety percent of the books in the bookstore are feminist.
Q：Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re currently doing?
I am currently running an independent bookstore, and I used to be a marketing executive in a real estate company, doing some planning and some operational work. I opened this bookstore because I have always liked to read books, and I also support some independent bookstores, and there are lots of independent bookstores in Chengdu, but I found that most of them are male managers, and I enjoyed my own reading method, and I want to combine this with feminism, and then I used to do marketing, I am good at doing various offline art activities, so I opened such an independent bookstore.
Q: Are most of the customers who come to your bookstore women?
Maybe 95% of the customers are women, 5% of the customers are men, this proportion is very surprising to me, even including my official account, and the followers of my personal public account are also 90% female and 10% male.
Q: What kind of concept does it seem like feminism or feminism to you?
It was probably 2017, it should be the first time that the book called misogyny was introduced to China, and I was quite shocked after reading it, because the industry I was engaged in was the real estate industry, and the misogynistic plot was very serious, and then after I finished reading that book, I felt that I was one of the accomplices of misogyny, I hated myself at that time, and I even became depressed for a period of time because of it, and since then, I have been out of control at the beginning of contact with feminism, and consciously read books about feminism.
Feminism as I understand it is actually a kind of right, that is, fighting for a kind of rights of humans, not that we should be above men. Many people regard feminism as too sacred, and sometimes people forget that feminism is actually a human right, and the equality between men and women that we pursue is actually equality between people.
Q: If it were you or personally, what would you like to convey with Nüshu? If it’s possible, or will it be combined with work, or something?
I don’t know, it’s actually quite contradictory, I think the pressure on women in this society is already very great, and if I have to learn this new way of writing, it will actually add some burden to women.
If there is any APP, or some interesting form, so that everyone can learn about it more conveniently, make it popular, but also take back our own right to speak, and then promote it in a better way, because I think some ancient cultures should be promoted.
For example, many people think that if you are a feminist bookstore manager, you should have a high level of educational or cultural literacy, and I think that as an individual, I am very one-sided and limited, and it is because of my one-sidedness and limitations that I have to keep learning.
Because we are more based on the equality of people, it is not a pure business activity, it is more or contains emotional connections. After some of the activities, some people will give me feedback, saying that feminism used to be just a theory in their minds , but now it has become a very concrete practice, including menstrual shame and sexual harassment, and I think these issues should really be discussed all the time, and they deserve to be discussed all the time.
Q: Did you have any memorable experiences during the time you opened the bookstore?
One aspect is feminism itself, especially in the community, where there are some points that are very divided in the direction of public opinion. The second is that when something becomes a doctrine, it’s the collective unconscious, or the collective consciousness, then it’s a centralized way, but if the whole world doesn’t come together to shout out for our rights, it won’t have that much influence, and we have to shout it out in the face of injustice.
At the same time, I’m also very worried, if I encourage women to have subjectivity in society, or help them establish subjectivity, will they also suffer some harm in the process of establishing this subjectivity, maybe they will live obediently, maybe they won’t be hurt, and whether they have such a strong heart.
But it’s really hard to do feminist content, some people ask you to be an elite, but I don’t want to be coerced by elitism anymore, I want to live a more comfortable life, for example, they will ask me to dress up, to be an elite woman, to discuss books with others, or to lead people to read, but I don’t think that kind of way is what I like, I think reading is a very personal thing.