Books and the qipao now share a clubhouse in Shanghai. The Bookish Qipao Reading Club was inaugurated on the evening of August 17 at Xujiahui Academy (徐家汇书院), the library in Shanghai’s Xuhui District, under the banner “Bookish Light, Qipao Bloom.” It forms a centerpiece of the 2026 Xujiahui Academy “Seeking Light Night” Reading Carnival, co-organized by the Shanghai Haipai Qipao Promotion Association, the academy and the qipao brand Jingbo Qinhuan (镜泊秦汉).
Guests Raise the Plaque Together
Zhang Lili (张丽丽), former chairwoman of the Shanghai Municipal Women’s Federation and founding president of the association, led the ceremony with three colleagues: Liu Shan (刘珊), the association’s vice president; Shen Qian (沈茜), deputy curator of Xujiahui Academy; and Zhu Ying (朱盈), vice president of the association and founder and chairwoman of Jingbo Qinhuan. In her address, Zhang Lili framed the club around three kinds of light: the light of culture, in which books carry the Haipai lineage; the light of beauty, in which the qipao gives contemporary Oriental women an elegant, modern presence; and the light of fusion, in which reading and qipao aesthetics move toward each other. The result, she argued, is a platform where books are the medium and the qipao is the bond.
Five Rooms of Qipao on Display
Jingbo Qinhuan’s qipao exhibition occupies five “light-box” spaces scattered through the library, each with its own name: Teaching and Reflection, Encounter, Cultural Lineage, Artistic Resonance, and Heritage and Collection. The pieces on show let Pankou (盘扣) fastenings, fabrics and cutting speak for themselves, and readers wander between book stacks and dress forms as they make the rounds.
Across the hall, a flash-mob runway show recreated the modern glamour of the centennial exhibition of The Young Companion, the Shanghai illustrated magazine that defined the city’s fashionable look in the 1920s and 1930s. Members of the promotion association, dressed in Jingbo Qinhuan qipao, walked the library corridors in a slow procession that brought the magazine’s covers back to life, linking reading, history and dress in one evening.
Inside the Shanghai Book Fair’s Xuhui Wing
The event sits inside the 2026 Shanghai Book Fair and the “Scent of Books in China” Shanghai Week. As the fair’s Xuhui branch, the academy runs under the theme “The Posture of Reading: A Book Cube,” with six themes built around the idea of gathering — Light, Quips, Riddle Trails, New Knowledge, Heritage and All Things. The Seeking Light Night carnival belongs to the first of those themes, and splits into four segments — Everlasting Classics, Is It Not a Joy to Read, Ink Falls Into Riddles, and Sky as Curtain, Earth as Mat — whose first characters spell “Yong Bu Luo Mu” (永不落幕), the phrase for “never-ending.” The night also added a Haipai culture exhibition and The Young Companion centennial to the library’s long book table, debuted a bookplate of the Wukang Building (武康大楼), the century-old landmark on Huaihai Middle Road, designed by Zhang Anpu (张安朴), and linked up with the nearby Wanping Theater (宛平剧院).
Going forward, the club plans to stay at Xujiahui Academy, deepen public reading promotion, carry on the intangible-heritage aesthetics of Haipai qipao, and keep building a women’s reading and exchange platform.