No glamorous chandeliers, no extravagant façade -- to find the most beautiful bookshop in China, travelers just have to follow the yellow-striped road to an underground car park.

Before Librairie Avant-Garde owner Qian Xiaohua, 50, obtained the 4,000-square-meter underground space beneath Wutaishan Stadium in Nanjing in 1999, it was a government car park and, earlier, a bomb shelter.