I found this in a 7-storey bookstore on Fuzhou Road. On the third floor, I passed beneath an arch bedecked with flashing lights and neon Stabilo stickers to enter the pen section. The salesladies had no English and I had no Mandarin, so we invented sign language for “No, not the rollerball, the fountain pen!” …
Better than the Cauliflower Festival, whose billboard waved goodbye to me as I was zooming towards Shanghai’s Pudong airport. I was in Shanghai for work, but was lucky enough to be billeted a five-minute walk away from Fuzhou Road. Fuzhou Road is shop after shop of books, office supplies, Chinese calligraphy supplies… and fountain pens. …