Stunningly Surreal Bookstore in China

There are more photos of the bookstore here: https://www.designboom.com/architecture/xliving-chongqing-zh...

This is basically a stepwell design. [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwell

Yes but where are the books? There's hardly any real books in the pics.

Some of the China's biggest cities already have many similarly 'over-designed' bookstores in which people went there mostly for touring/sightseeing purpose than buying actual books (since it is easier and cheaper to buy online or read e-books).

I am also wondering what is the future of offline bookstore in general.

At least in my area remaining bookstores tend to do one or more of the following:

- operate a coffee shop, so one can eat/drink a snack while reading

- host in person events to drive foot traffic

- branch into related fields, like selling stationery. Stationery is one of those things people like purchasing in person, because they like unique pretty stationery

Beautiful design. Want to read inside.

The surreal part is surely the book-sized holes the censors cut out.

Well the way things are going that might not be surreal to very many people anymore