“During the time of the NSAU, scholars such as Fei Xiaotong and Wang Zengqi often sought spiritual solace here,“ Li said, pointing to the time-browned photos on the wall.

　　One can't help but see the kindred destinies of Dongfang Bookstore and Shakespeare and Company in Paris. The former served as a harbor for China's wartime scholars adrift in turbulent times, while the latter sheltered James Joyce as he penned Ulysses.

　　A century on, Dongfang Bookstore's legacy is alive and well -- not just through the faithful restoration of its physical space, but equally through its curatorial choices.

　　“The original Dongfang Bookstore specialized in the humanities and social sciences, which is a tradition we uphold today,“ said Li, cradling a volume of Yunnan's pre-digital historical archives.

　　Today, the bookstore's curation philosophy -- rejecting eight genres of utilitarian literature from get-rich-quick schemes and self-help platitudes to cookie-cutter success manuals -- stands as a humanist manifesto against the algorithmic echo chambers.

　　At Dongfang Bookstore, we encountered Charlie, a British university professor who had specially traveled here with his wife, captivated by the legacy of Chinese luminary Lin Huiyin who used to study at the University of Cambridge.

　　“I am so surprised to find that this place houses British works from several decades ago,“ he said, pointing to the Wanyou Wenku on the shelves, a collectanea published during the late 1920s and the 1930s by the Commercial Press.

　　These out-of-print volumes exist beyond AI's reach, which Li likened to “data atolls“ that preserve pre-digital scholarship. Here, smartphones fade into irrelevance as readers engage in the alchemy of paper and ink, forging neural connections no algorithm can replicate.