Baiwu Turns a Granary Into a Bookstore and Its Streets Into a Poetry Festival

Nearly 20,000 Books Arrive in a Historic Yunnan Village

Nearly 20,000 books, more than 100 poems displayed around a village, and a former granary painted gold have brought a new cultural gathering place to Baiwu in southwestern China. The Huize Rural Bookstore opened in late May in Nagu town, Huize county, Yunnan province, with a poetry festival that carried literature beyond its shelves and into streets, courtyards and fields.

The bookstore is the sixth Yunnan branch of Librairie Avant-Garde, the chain founded in Nanjing in 1996. Its arrival brings together several ambitions: preserving old buildings, attracting visitors, creating space for residents to gather and giving children more opportunities to encounter books and poetry.

Architect Liu Jiakun, the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, led the conversion of an old granary and a house resembling a pigpen into a bookstore and café. The project retains the village's traditional earthen walls while introducing a new internal structure, bookshelves and seating made with a bamboo composite.

Baiwu has a long history but has also experienced significant poverty. Its new bookstore puts a different kind of activity alongside the village's ancient transport routes, copper heritage and traditional homes. Residents can use its poetry garden even after the shop and café close.

The opening has already drawn more tourists, according to local cultural tourism worker He Jian. Its broader ambitions extend beyond those early visits: the bookstore is intended to become part of everyday village life, rather than a place used only by people passing through.

Why Baiwu's History Matters to the Project

Baiwu means "white fog." The village stands on the east bank of the Jinsha River, an upper stream of the Yangtze. More than 2,000 years ago, it served as an important courier station along a major military and merchant route.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, copper mining and transport made Baiwu a hub on the route toward the capital. It became known as "the inaugural stop on the long supply route to the capital." That history later helped shape the bookstore's most visible architectural choice: its gold exterior.

Baiwu retains 24 historical relics, including guild halls, temples, bridges and city walls. More than 2,000 traditional dwellings, with gray tiled roofs and earthen walls, preserve the physical setting in which the bookstore now operates.

The village received national historical and cultural village status in 2005. That recognition existed alongside serious economic hardship. Librairie Avant-Garde's project seeks to connect the surviving heritage with new cultural activity, giving Baiwu a role beyond the copper mining, transport and casting associated with its past.

The key dates behind the opening show how the chain's expansion intersects with the village's longer history:

• More than 2,000 years ago: Baiwu served as a courier station on a military and merchant route.
• During the Ming and Qing dynasties: Copper mining and transport helped make the village a regional hub.
• 1996: Librairie Avant-Garde was founded in Nanjing.
• 2005: Baiwu was designated a national historical and cultural village.
• 2025: Liu Jiakun received the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
• Late May 2025: The Huize Rural Bookstore opened with the Librairie Avant-Garde Poetry Festival.

A Festival Places Poems Beside Everyday Objects

Chen Qinshaofu, a poet and bookstore operator from Kunming, led the team that placed more than 100 poems throughout Baiwu for the opening festival. Works by Chinese and international poets appeared on doors, walls and windows, as well as in fields.

The placement connected particular poems with their surroundings. Seamus Heaney's The Forge appeared on Forge Street. Robert Frost's The Wood-Pile was placed beside a woodpile. Jorge Luis Borges' Un Patio appeared in a tidy courtyard.

Hou Ma's Snow Falls Quietly and Dinner Is Getting Ready also became part of the village display, alongside works by ethnic minority writers. Visitors and residents could discover the poems while moving through familiar spaces, making the village something like an open air poetry gallery and a literary treasure hunt.

Chen described the aim as giving people opportunities to "encounter poetry" unexpectedly. The poems were intended to prompt reflection through their connection with daily surroundings, without requiring readers to begin by entering the bookstore.

Zhang Ruifeng, the rotating president of Librairie Avant-Garde, explained how the village's name and the chain's literary focus led to the festival:

Baiwu is a poetic name. Poetry is a signature section in the bookstore, so we thought, 'why not organize a poetry festival in the village?'

The festival carried that idea across Baiwu. A street name, a courtyard or a stack of wood became a setting for a poem, bringing international writing and local voices into the same village landscape.

Old Earthen Walls Surround a New Structure

Liu's architectural task was to make a modern bookstore and café work within buildings inherited from Baiwu's rural past. His approach combined respect for the existing village with a belief in the project's "spiritual strength."

The original rammed earth walls were preserved and reinforced. Rammed earth is a building method in which earth is compacted to form solid walls. Keeping those walls allowed the conversion to retain a central feature of the buildings instead of replacing their entire structure.

A new structure made from "Wooden Bamboo" was inserted inside. The material is a high performance composite reinforced with bamboo fiber, bringing bamboo fibers together in an engineered material. The project used it for the first time in an architectural structure, as well as for bookshelves and seating.

The material was presented as an environmentally friendly part of the design. Its use linked the practical work of supporting and furnishing the bookstore with the wider aim of adapting existing buildings for a new purpose.

Liu also faced a visual challenge. The bookstore needed to belong within Baiwu while being distinctive enough to signal the positive energy the project hoped to bring. The answer was to spray paint the exterior walls gold.

The color refers both to the village's copper mining history and to the Chinese saying "there is a house of gold in books." In the bookstore, the saying connects the idea of wealth with knowledge, while the exterior gives the converted buildings a recognizable identity.

Liu Jiakun, the architect responsible for the conversion, described the care involved in choosing the shade:

It's risky to use the color gold. Different shades of gold indicate different ethos. We did a lot of experiments and chose a brilliant, elegant one.

A Poetry Garden That Stays Open After Closing Time

The poetry garden gives the project a public role beyond book sales. Shaped like an amphitheater, with seating arranged for people to gather around performances, it can accommodate poetry readings, music and other community events.

Each seat carries a line by a Chinese or international poet. Literature is therefore built into the place where residents sit, talk and watch performances, extending the festival's approach into a lasting part of the design.

Liu's interest in coexistence with nature also appears in the garden. Flowers are intended to change its appearance through the seasons, while climbing plants will cover the walls. The space is designed to develop over time rather than remain visually fixed at the opening.

The garden also solves a practical problem by incorporating public toilets without sacrificing its appearance or its use as a gathering place. That combination gives an everyday service a place within the cultural project.

After the bookstore and café close, the garden remains accessible. Residents gather there after dinner, children play, and people can read the lines inscribed on the seats. Its function as a village square continues outside the commercial opening hours.

Zhang Ruifeng, Librairie Avant-Garde's rotating president, connected that use directly to the chain's purpose in rural areas:

We put our bookstores in the countryside to build a public space for villagers. Here, this goal has been achieved thanks to the ingenious design.

The garden makes the intended public benefit concrete. A resident can use part of the project as a place to spend an evening even when the retail spaces are no longer operating.

Villagers Join the Opening and Shape Its Daily Role

Villagers and visitors from nearby cities attended the opening ceremony, which combined live music, talks about architecture and poetry readings. The program brought the building, its literary purpose and its surrounding community into the same event.

Local voices were included. Gui Lisha read a poem in the local dialect, placing the language of Baiwu alongside the Chinese and international poetry presented through the festival.

Zhang encouraged residents to make the bookstore part of their daily lives. His hope was that its influence would grow through repeated encounters with books, events and people, especially among younger villagers.

Zhang Ruifeng described that hope for the village and its children:

the bookstore, cultural events, and visitors will gradually influence villagers' attitudes toward life, especially the children.

The project's approach includes involving villagers in the design and operation of the bookstore and keeping public spaces accessible. Those choices are intended to root the new venue in local life while allowing it to welcome visitors.

The poetry garden gives that ambition a routine setting. The opening ceremony brought people together for a special occasion; evenings in the garden give residents a place to return when there is no festival or formal performance.

More Visitors and Products Draw on Copper Heritage

He Jian, a local cultural tourism worker, has observed a noticeable increase in tourists coming to Baiwu to take photographs, read and buy cultural products since the bookstore's arrival.

The shop sells magnets, postcards, bags and copper items. Many products were designed specifically for Baiwu, connecting purchases with the place visitors have come to see. Copper goods refer directly to the industry and transport history that once helped define the village.

The bookstore therefore brings together several activities: reading, browsing, buying gifts, visiting historic surroundings and attending cultural events. Its architecture and festival give visitors reasons to spend time in Baiwu beyond a single purchase.

No visitor totals, sales figures or measured changes in household income were given. The early economic picture rests on the observed rise in visits and the new retail activity, while the public garden provides a more immediate example of how residents are using the project.

For a village with a history of poverty, the ambition is to create new opportunities without leaving its identity behind. The connection to copper, traditional buildings, local speech and village gathering spaces runs through the bookstore's design and program.

How Baiwu Fits Into the Chain's Rural Expansion

Librairie Avant-Garde has opened branches in ancient towns and villages across China, choosing locations for their historical and scenic value. Its projects adapt buildings such as granaries, academies and silos, giving structures built for earlier needs a new cultural use.

The Baiwu branch follows that pattern while adding its own response to local history. Elsewhere in Yunnan, the Shaxi branch in Dali includes a "Poetry Tower" with panoramic views. The Weishan Chongzheng Academy Bookstore combines a 500-year-old academy with modern book galleries and an outdoor theater.

The chain describes these rural bookstores as "spiritual granaries." The phrase connects buildings once used to store physical necessities with places intended to support reading, cultural participation and community life.

Artists, architects and cultural entrepreneurs have been moving into rural areas to create new forms of community activity. Sometimes encouraged by government policy, that movement responds to decades of rural population loss as young people move to cities and traditional village life declines.

Librairie Avant-Garde's model brings architectural reuse and cultural programming together. The stated purpose is broader than retail: preserving local heritage, strengthening community connections and creating new possibilities for rural residents.

The chain has also attracted international attention. Its original Nanjing store was named one of the world's most beautiful bookstores by CNN, and its rural branches have appeared in international architecture and design publications. Its pursuit of literary and community "spiritual homes" has inspired similar initiatives elsewhere in China and beyond.

Keeping Cultural Tourism Connected to Village Life

Bishan in Anhui province illustrates the concerns that can accompany cultural investment in villages. The arrival of artists, tourists and money can bring rising property prices, gentrification and tensions over whether development serves residents or outside visitors.

Gentrification describes changes in which investment and newcomers make an area more expensive and alter who can afford to live or work there. In rural cultural projects, another concern is that a village can become a polished tourist attraction increasingly removed from the lives of the people who live there.

Some critics argue that this kind of development risks producing sanitized destinations rather than sustaining living communities. Baiwu's project seeks to address those concerns through respect for local traditions, resident participation and public access, with poetry and literature providing a purpose beyond commercial tourism alone.

The combination of preserved historical structures, a bamboo composite, cultural events and shared outdoor space also distinguishes the project from development based mainly on replacing buildings or creating visitor attractions. Its aim is to keep cultural identity and community use connected to economic activity.

Liu Jiakun expressed his view of architecture's social role in terms that reach beyond the appearance of a building:

Architecture can shape human behavior and create an atmosphere, providing a sense of tranquility and poetry, evoking empathy and kindness, and fostering a sense of community with shared joys and sorrows.

In Baiwu, that ambition has taken the form of specific spaces and activities: reinforced earthen walls around new bookshelves, poems attached to everyday places, a local dialect heard at the opening and a garden that remains available after the café shuts. Together, they place the bookstore within the village's daily routines as well as its visitor economy.

Key Points

• The Huize Rural Bookstore opened in Baiwu in late May 2025 with nearly 20,000 books, becoming Librairie Avant-Garde's sixth Yunnan branch.
• Chen Qinshaofu led a festival team that displayed more than 100 Chinese and international poems around the village.
• Liu Jiakun, the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, converted an old granary and a house resembling a pigpen into a bookstore and café.
• The design preserves rammed earth walls, introduces a bamboo composite and uses a gold exterior connected to Baiwu's copper history.
• The poetry garden remains open after the shop and café close, providing space for residents to gather and children to play.
• Local tourism worker He Jian observed more visitors, while the shop sells products including copper items designed around village heritage.
• The project combines cultural tourism with community use, amid wider concerns about rising costs and the transformation of villages into tourist destinations.