VVG Something, a 42-square-meter bookstore in Taipei's east district, was picked recently as one of the world's 20 most beautiful bookstores by an entertainment website.
The Taipei shop is described by Flavorwire.com as “almost utilitarian but filled with simple old-world grace” that resembles “what we might imagine our ideal ship's main cabin to look like.” In addition to a small collection of mainly architecture and design books curated by the owner, the petit shop also sells unlikely articles of nostalgia such as handmade iron nails, vintage metal locks, old typing machines and oil-paper envelopes.
The shopkeeper at VVG (short for Very Very Good) Something told The China Post that since the local media reported on the website's accolade, she has seen significant increase in visitor flow to the place, which began as a hobby of the restaurant-running owner.
People have been drawn to nostalgia throughout history. What people are experiencing now, however, is nostalgia specific to the revival of senses increasingly truncated by cutting-edge technologies.
What “old-world grace” shops are mainly offering are not the items of the past — who would need a handmade metal nail, after all? — but more importantly the sounds, smells and textures of ages bygone. In an era of unscratchable touch screens and sleek, perpetually Internet-connected devices that seem to smoothen all the edges of the world, people suddenly find themselves yearning for the reassuring roughness of the imperfect.
While digital cameras have replaced analog models as the mainstream photo taking device, and are themselves being replaced by smartphones, currently many of the popular camera apps are ones that allow users to create slightly out-focused or excessively saturated “vintage photos.” In an age of computer-generated action blockbusters and 3D adaptations, the most-talked-about picture in Hollywood this year is a black-and-white mime called “The Artist.”
The story is the same in Asia, the movie that got most people talking in the Chinese-speaking world recently is the 1990s period romance “You Are the Apple of My Eye,” which has a mandarin Chinese title that means “the girls we chased together back in those years”. The Taiwanese movie is often referred to locally and in Hong Kong, where it became the bestselling Chinese-language movie in history, simply as “Those Years”. It is the nostalgia that sells, not the love story.
It might sound paradoxical, but the “nostalgia industry” will be the latest spinoff of the high-tech industry. As the increasing availability of smart devices and Internet connections start to make the sleek and magical world long-imagined by sci-fi writers a reality, the reassurances and the illustrative simplicity given by the analog, the unconnected, the mechanical and the rough will be valuable.
The nostalgia industry, however, is not merely a used-good selling business. The common feature between VVG Something, “The Artist” and vintage photography apps is that they are all carefully designed modern projects aiming to “create” a sense of oldness. The bookshop might look old in pictures, but it is well-curated to fit the taste of modern readers and has none of the moldy smell of an old shop. The apps, needless to say, run on smart devices and can send photos wirelessly.
The nostalgia industry will be a design-focused niche business with the wired generation in mind. With a strong design talent base, diverse culture, complex historical background and high technology-penetration rate and picturesque landscapes, Taiwan is perfectly situated for the development of such an industry.
For the time being, local nostalgia business is mainly headed by nimble entrepreneurs, from boutique shop owners to vendors at “cultural bazaars” mushrooming in the “chic areas” across Taiwan. The government, however, should consider targeting it as a mainstay of the cultural industry. For starters, it can renovate historical sites and storied tourist attractions with the appeal of nostalgia in mind.
