On Sunday afternoon Jodi and I went out to buy stationery supplies, and I made two cool discoveries.

First, as we walked south from the Nanjing East Rd metro station, née Henan Middle Rd, we raw across a bookstore that I'd seen before but never been inside. Since it had the looks of a small mom-and-pop place I got Jodi to duck inside with me and found an honest-to-goodness second-hand bookshop. Not only that, it's a foreign-language second-hand bookshop. This means magazines, fiction and non-fiction in English, German and Japanese, including Time magazine, the Economist, and some Japanese near-porn. The selection isn't that great, but I say 支持 because second-hand bookshops are GREAT in my book. 山西南路36号

Second, I'd been in the one state-run stationery store before, the one with all the first-rate imported goods that you can't find anywhere else in Shanghai, eg scissors with blades longer than a couple inches. But I'd never gone upstairs, and that was a mistake: ride the escalator to the fourth floor and find a Chinese-style mall a la Xujiahui computer malls, but for art and paper supplies. I dunno if it's the atmosphere or the shady dealing, but I just felt like I was getting better deals than on Fuzhou Rd itself.

So check them out if you're in the neighborhood.