Yanju Bookstore

Yanju Bookstore is an initiative of the Penghu Village Culture Revitalization Story Museum. Throughout its history of immigration, industry, beliefs, and customs, Penghu has always seen individual villages develop unique characteristics in a clustered format, with exchanges occurring at the village level. A single village is the most fundamental unit of Penghu's culture. The distinctive island village culture encompasses linguistic life, religious customs, temples, 'cai zhai' (vegetable gardens protected by stone walls), docks, and architectural layouts. In the past, Penghu's culture operated on a village-by-village basis, fostering distinct sub-regional cultural identities. Both competition, cooperation, and assimilation occurred at the village level, leading to the development of unique cultures such as the Jibei 'cai zhai' culture, Chikan clove culture, Nanliao farming culture, and Pengnan fishing culture. Even wedding customs developed distinct characteristics, such as the Magong 'zha zao' (fried pastry) culture and Wang'an 'jian zao' (another type of fried pastry) culture. These village characteristics existed in a microscopic but historically significant way. However, with outward migration, generational cultural gaps, regional changes ending their independence, shifts in lifestyle, and the substitution by popular culture, the essence of Penghu's village culture is rapidly disappearing. This generation of Penghu residents no longer distributes 'zha zao' at weddings, their daily diet no longer includes dried fish, 'cai zhai' are falling into disuse, and old houses are being demolished. Our generation will witness the decline of Penghu's village culture within the next 20 years. This is foreseeable if we do not take action, or if the actions we take are not precise enough. To rescue Penghu's village culture, both governmental and private sectors have invested significant resources in community development, achieving success in issue description, promotional education, and data construction. However, when discussing local revitalization, experiences from Japan and Europe tell us that such initiatives begin with local style but are completed through a cultural economic model that supports industrial livelihood. Culture is the life of the previous generation; it possesses universality and value within its own timeline, generating beneficial effects—beneficial to life and living, beneficial to economic livelihood and social development. Therefore, for cultural preservation efforts to succeed, the endangered and disappearing culture must also generate altruistic and self-serving benefits in the contemporary era. Only by creating a cultural economy can universality be established; once universality is created, the culture is preserved. This is Yanju's core value regarding cultural sustainability and local revitalization: creating both altruistic and self-serving benefits for old cultures in the contemporary era through a cultural economic model, which is essentially a cultural business model. This approach will be twice as effective in cultural revitalization. For 20 years, Yanju has adhered to this principle in its Penghu cultural initiatives. We integrate with many communities to generate cultural economic assets for villages, fostering the development of village cultures into livelihood models. This is also the concept behind the establishment of this museum: to serve as an incubator assisting Penghu villages in moving towards cultural livelihoods, thereby completing the final puzzle piece of local revitalization—cultural livelihood. Yanju Bookstore is located within the Duxing 10th Village historical architectural complex. It occupies a 30-ping (approximately 1000 sq ft) century-old Japanese-style building, operating for over 300 days annually to provide stable service. The cultural creative center's current functions include walking tours, art creation exhibitions and sales, local revitalization, community product development and sales, lectures, and experiential workshops. It attracts 80,000 visitors annually, collaborates with over 30 communities and artists, and has long invested in experimental cultural initiatives, including organizing cultural creative markets. After being renamed the Penghu Village Story Museum in 2025, the cultural creative center will have a broader scope.