Tourists read books at a bookshop in Shaxi Town, Jianchuan County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, March 17, 2025. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo)

　　by Xinhua writers Wu Yan, Zeng Wei, Ma Yunfei

　　KUNMING, April 23 (Xinhua) -- Through the weathered wooden door on a bluestone lane of the Old Street in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province, the air still hummed with 1926.

　　Here in the century-old Dongfang (Oriental) Bookstore, the gentle turning of pages mounted a furious resistance to the algorithms' roar. Its interior remains untouched by time -- a living mirror of the sepia photographs lining its walls.

　　The bookstore first opened its doors on Kunming's Guanghua Street, which later became an intellectual hub of the National Southwest Associated University (NSAU) during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, serving as a torchbearer of culture amidst the flames of war.

　　As AI dominates information access today, Dongfang Bookstore offers what the online realm cannot -- original editions compiled pre-digitally. Page by page, readers engage with history manually, tracing it through handwritten marginalia that no algorithm can decipher.

　　“AI excels at 'knowing,' but fails at 'understanding,'“ said Li Guohao, the bookstore curator, running his fingers along a yellowed book's spine. “Each reading here constitutes a co-creation with the text,“ he told us.

　　This seemingly “anti-efficient“ persistence has, against all odds, resonated across continents. After receiving a gift of books from Dongfang Bookstore, an independent bookstore in Paris returned the gesture with a canvas tote emblazoned with its logo, together with a handwritten thank-you card.