Behind a facade of minimalistic green LED signs, walls lined with bamboo shelves holding Mandarin translations of “American Prometheus” alongside pink and red spindly orchids welcomes customers to Dupont Circle’s new hotspot for Chinese literature and learning. 

JF Books opened its doors on Connecticut Avenue on Sept. 1 as the District’s only Chinese-language bookstore, the reincarnation of Shanghai bookstore chain Jifeng Bookstore, which served as a harbinger of free speech in China until the country’s government forced its ultimate closure in 2018 in a wave of censorship over bookstores. JF Books founder and CEO Yu Miao said he hopes to use the bookstore as a place to build connections among the Chinese community in D.C. and promote “the joy of embracing freedom.”

As customers peruse the two-story shop, books priced between about $15 to $35 line the space in genres ranging from fiction to social sciences with editions in English and Chinese. Jifeng-branded postcards cover a wall along the right side of the store, each with farewell messages from former customers and an array of framed photos of the Shanghai store.

“The bookstore here is more open, more free, more inclusive,” Yu, who owned the flagship Shanghai store, said.

Jifeng, which means monsoon in Mandarin, once owned eight locations dotted throughout Shanghai and hosted forums, lectures, readings and documentary screenings. But when Xi Jinping, the president of the People’s Republic of China, rose to power in 2012, the government purged books it deemed inappropriate, like those written by pro-democracy authors, and increased control over publishers. The crackdown left only one branch of the bookstore standing.

When the final Jifeng store also faced the threat of closing due to increased rent prices in 2012, Yu — who was working with a public welfare foundation at the time — stepped in as the store’s new owner and found a new, cheaper storefront at a different location in Shanghai to continue carrying out Jifeng’s mission of freedom of expression.

“It’s great pity if such a reputable and long-history bookstore was closed, so I decided to take it over,” Yu said. 

He ran the business from 2012 to 2018 until the Shanghai Library, a state-run institution that owned the space, refused to extend Jifeng’s lease because the store’s mission challenged the government’s ideologies. As Jifeng’s final days approached, customers wrote farewell messages like “Jifeng Bookstore is waiting for your return” on postcards mounted to a clock in the store that counted down until the store’s closure.

Until the beginning of this year, Yu — who had been studying at American University and University of the District of Columbia since 2019 — said he had not even thought about reopening the store. But after enjoying the “peaceful pace of life” in the District, he said his friends floated the idea of reopening Jifeng Books as a D.C. bookstore and he quickly leapt into the project.

He wanted the new store to be in a lively business area in the District, so after two months of searching for the store’s new home, he landed in Dupont Circle. After four months of renovation and three months of gathering merchandise and shop fixtures, Jifeng opened its D.C. doors under the new name of JF Books, a name he hopes will be easier for non-Chinese speakers to pronounce while still paying homage to the original name of the Shanghai shop.

“It’s a new environment for me, especially the business environment,” Yu said.

The shop sits on a bustling stretch of Connecticut Avenue, where two neon green signs display the store’s name in both English and Mandarin and entice visitors to enter the warmly lit, white-walled space. The goodbye postcards from the shuttered shop cover a mirror in the bookstore next to a note stating, “Today, those postcards carrying blessings and hopes, have crossed the sea and traveled across six years, arriving at the Reborn Jifeng.” 

Yu said the revived bookstore purchases some of its stock from mainland China focusing on Chinese political science and the humanities, as well as traditional Chinese-language literature from Hong Kong and Taiwan. He said he purchases about 30 percent of the books in the store from U.S.-based publishers whose English-language books center on Chinese and Asian studies or were written by Asian American authors, like Lisa See’s “Shanghai Girls.”

He said he decided to add fiction and nonfiction English-language books like “Unofficial China” by Perry Link to the store’s inventory to embrace the wider range of languages among the clientele he was likely to find in D.C., which has the sixth-highest Chinese population in the U.S. In the few weeks since JF’s opening, Yu said he has noticed a more diverse social environment in the D.C. shop than the Shanghai store.

The shop sits adjacent to beloved D.C. bookstore and restaurant Kramers, but Yu said JF’s different “positioning” means there is no direct competition between the stores. He said the addition of JF to Dupont Circle adds “more tastes of culture” to the neighborhood and opens a space for D.C.’s Chinese community.

“I want to contribute to the whole community, not only a specific community,” Yu said. “I want to build the connection among the Chinese community, but I want to do more.”

In addition to a change in customer demographics, Yu said the District’s more “relaxed” political environment makes it easier to fulfill the store’s mission of free speech. He said the “severe” censorship in China clashed with Jifeng’s previous slogan, “Independent cultural stance. Free expression of ideas,” a phrase the shop now prints on tote bags available for sale in the store. 

“We want to show our value, show our attitudes and launching for better society through that slogan,” Yu said.

Reflecting the theme of new beginnings, JF’s new slogan is “Wind’s voice, freedom’s choice.” The slogan is represented in the store’s reworked logo, a simple design meant to depict the flow of ideas from engaging with literature.

“The meaning of the new slogan embodies the joy of embracing freedom and the firm adherence to the value of freedom,” Yu said.

Since JF’s Sept. 1 grand opening, the store has hosted three lectures by Chinese American scholars Ha Jin, Wu Guoguang and Minxin Pei, a feat similar to the events Jifeng used to host in China. Yu said he also hopes to host weekly “Chinese Corner” and “English Corner” language instruction series to tutor customers in Mandarin and English, respectively. 

“I think the readers can satisfied with the books we selected for them, and they can feel good when they attend the events,” Yu said. “And if that goal will be achieved, we can consider the next step.”