The Last Bookstore | 最后的书局

China | Documentary | 2019 | 13 minutes | Mandarin and Indonesian with Chinese and English subtitles

Director: Xu Shuo

SYNOPSIS

A documentary on the Mandarin Bookstore, the only existing Chinese bookstore in Jakarta Indonesia, introducing a group of Chinese Indonesians and their emotional attachment to their mother tongue, while addressing the future of this bookstore and preservation of its culture. 

Mandarin Bookstore, located in the Chinatown of Jakarta, Indonesia, had been through thirty years and now became the only Chinese bookstore in the region. For its elder readers, the bookstore bears their last attachment to their mother tongue. However, as the aging of customers and the shrinking of business, the bookstore is faced with severe challenges. How to save the bookstore became the critical concern of its initiator and many of the customers.

In the fall of 2019, the grandson of the initiator, John Yeo Suryawan, went to study Chinese education in Taiwan regardless of the opposition of his families. His grandfather Yoza Suryawan, the prestigious Chinese Indonesian in Jakarta passed away two years later, at the age of eighty-eight.

DIRECTOR - Xu Shuo

Xu Shuo is a Shanghai-based documentary director. His recent documentaries, The Last Bookstore and Unwed Mothers, have won awards in many competitions, such as Los Angeles International Film Festival, Global Youth Film Festival Bangladesh, World of Women Film Fair Middle East, Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival, China International New Media Short Film Festiva, Davis Feminist Film Festival, and Toronto International Women Film Festival.