The best story in the District’s newest bookstore isn’t on its shelves. You’ll find it on the walls of Jifeng Bookstore’s narrow Dupont Circle storefront: a mirror covered in dozens of postcards with farewells written in Mandarin. Framed photos of a crowd huddled together in a darkened bookstore — but not this one — singing songs and lit by the flashlights of their phones.
By Daniel Wu
Jifeng Bookstore closed in 2018 in Shanghai, where the store originated, when the Chinese government cracked down on what had become a vibrant liberal forum for academics, students and other readers to discuss politics and philosophy. When city authorities canceled the store’s lectures and declined to renew its lease, Jifeng’s owner, Yu Miao, was convinced the store could no longer continue.
Now it has resurfaced on the other side of the world.
Jifeng Bookstore opened Sunday as a rare Chinese-language bookstore in the District. Now called JF Books, the store also sells English books on Asian history and novels by Asian American authors. Yu told The Washington Post that the bookstore’s unlikely journey from one of China’s largest cities to Connecticut Avenue was spurred by a desire to connect with his new home in Washington — and a determination not to give up on a storied institution that a community of Chinese readers hasn’t forgotten.
“Almost all my friends in China read the news,” said Yu, 52,. “They just thought that Jifeng was already dead. They never thought it would have the chance to be reborn, in Washington, D.C.”
“They said I’m resilient,” he added, “that I will never be beat down.”
Starting a monsoon
Jifeng Bookstore was founded in 1997 by Yan Bofei, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The bookstore’s name means “monsoon” in Mandarin, which Yan chose to capture what he saw as the currents of cultural change sweeping China at the turn of the century, he told a Chinese publication in 2008. He stocked Jifeng’s shelves with texts on history, politics and philosophy and grew it into a chain of eight bookstores, most located in Shanghai’s bustling metro stations.
But as it became a mainstay for academics, students and other progressives in the city, Jifeng faced increasing pressure from a Chinese government that steadily tightened censorship of academics and booksellers in the 2010s, the South China Morning Post reported. Seminars on topics such as the South China Sea and constitutionalism in China were canceled after authorities objected. Rising rents in Shanghai also priced Jifeng out of several locations until it was reduced to one flagship store near the Shanghai Library.
In 2017, city authorities refused to renew Jifeng’s lease. Yu, who purchased the business from Yan in 2012, said he was devastated. On the night before Jifeng’s closing in January 2018, as Yu organized a somber gathering to celebrate the bookstore, the shop’s power was unexpectedly shut off.
Patrons continued to arrive, Yu recalled. In the dark, they brought a guitar and sang protest songs in English, such as “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical “Les Misérables.”
“They came from everywhere,” Yu said. “More and more people stayed in the bookstore [and] sang together. So the darkness seemed not so frightening.”
Despite the display of support, there wasn’t more Yu felt he could do. He had asked around Shanghai for places Jifeng could move to and was turned away each time, he said. As long as the government was watching, it didn’t seem as though Jifeng Bookstore had a future in China.
“That page is over,” Yu recalled thinking.
‘Staying in a new land’
Jifeng’s fans decried its closure across Chinese social media. Yu, however, had made his peace with putting the business to rest. He moved to the United States in 2019 to study a master’s degree in political science at American University. During the coronavirus pandemic, he moved to Florida with his family. Still, he couldn’t escape the Chinese government’s scrutiny — Yu in 2022 accused Chinese authorities of trying to compel him to return to China by barring his wife, Xie Fang, from leaving the country after a visit.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington said it was not familiar with the specifics of Jifeng’s closure or Xie’s case.
Xie eventually returned to the United States, but the couple has not traveled to China since, Yu said. They moved to Washington in August 2023, and Yu said it was a desire to connect with his new home that brought Jifeng Bookstore to mind once more.
“I think it’s very natural,” Yu said. “We’re staying in a new land. You want to know the society deeper; you want to get to know more and more people. In my experience, opening a bookstore is the right way [to do so].”
Yu ordered books from publishers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He found a small storefront in Dupont Circle — right next to the neighborhood’s longtime bookstore and cafe Kramers, whose manager excitedly welcomed Yu to the block, he said. Yu furnished the space with bright wooden bookshelves and memorabilia from Jifeng’s Shanghai stores. In August, Jifeng’s social media accounts resurfaced to announce that the bookstore had new life, thousands of miles away in a new city.
The bookstore’s announcement was removed from the Chinese social media network WeChat shortly after it was posted, Yu said. On X and Instagram, fans of the bookstore from Shanghai celebrated the news. Many of them had, like Yu, moved to the United States in the years since Jifeng closed, and they pledged to visit.
When the bookstore celebrated its grand opening over the Labor Day weekend, patrons once again packed the store. But this time, the lights were on and sunlight streamed in despite the overcast Sunday morning. It felt like a homecoming.
“This is a landmark event in our community,” said Zhou Fengsuo, the executive director of Human Rights in China, who was among the visitors Sunday.
“I was so excited,” said Min Liang, who lives in Potomac but grew up in Shanghai a few blocks away from Jifeng’s first store. “I immediately put it on my calendar and said, ‘Oh, I have to be there on the first day.’”
Philip Kafalas, an associate professor of Chinese at Georgetown University, said he’d stop by Jifeng on every visit to China to buy classical Chinese texts he couldn’t find in the United States. When the store closed, he stuck a printout of a news article about the closure to his office door in lament.
“Somehow it’s opening in my backyard,” he laughed.
In a quiet corner at the back of the bookstore, Maggie Yu read from a stack of Chinese picture books to her 4-year-old son, Jacob — a rare opportunity in the United States, she said.
“I haven’t been in any bookstore with Chinese books for about … eight years after I came to America,” she said. “I read a lot of books to him, and even some English books about Chinese, it’s always [those] very limited themes about the holidays, [Chinese] New Year.”
Yu Miao said he was overjoyed with the reception JF Books received on its first day. He plans to continue the bookstore’s tradition of hosting lectures and seminars and has scheduled three from Chinese professors for September. He’s also considering starting a publishing business and hosting conversation sessions for patrons to practice their English and Chinese.
He hopes, in the spirit of Jifeng’s founder and the connections the store fostered in Shanghai, that the bookstore’s second act in D.C. can become a space for all Washingtonians.
“I really want to contribute to the local community,” Yu said.
