Xinhua Bookstore, 1987: The Cradle of Knowledge of an Era

For a high school student in 1987, the “Cloud” was actually a wooden counter at the Xinhua Bookstore. That thick Apple II Reference Manual cost me an entire week’s worth of lunch money. Buying a book back then wasn’t a click of a mouse; you had to push through crowds smelling of sweat and ink just to receive those secret ciphers to the digital world from the clerk’s hands.