HANGZHOU, CHINA

Zhongshuge Bookstore

In internet-addicted China, now the world’s largest e-commerce market, bookstores have had to reinvent themselves swiftly to survive. For the Chinese bookseller Zhongshuge’s new outlet on Binsheng Road in Hangzhou (86-0571-8800-3279), a booming tech hub about an hour southwest of Shanghai by train, this meant turning the concept of a bookstore on its head: Rather than making books the sole focal point, the owners created a high-design space filled with optical illusions to attract experience-seeking millennials and even younger readers.

When you walk into the shop, the books appear to reach impossible heights and stretch clear into the distance, an effect created by the perfect symmetry of the dark wooden shelves and the clever use of mirrors on the ceilings and walls. In an amphitheater-like room for readings and lectures, the impression is amplified by the reflection of the curved wall in the mirrored ceiling; it feels as if you are completely surrounded by a rainbow of book spines. In yet another room, the books are arranged on thin columns placed randomly around the room like trees in a forest, with benches interspersed for reading. Again, a mirrored ceiling makes the shelves appear as if they are not just trees, but towering redwoods.

Li Xiang, the designer of the store, said the idea was to get young people in the doors and encourage them to linger for hours over a book or a piece of tiramisù and an espresso in the bookstore’s cafe. On a recent afternoon, that was precisely what customers were doing; the shop was filled with 20-somethings flipping through novels, not a cellphone in sight.

“I didn’t want it to be a traditional bookstore; I would rather it be like an art gallery,” Ms. Li said.

Hangzhou is revered in China for its misty mountains, tea plantations and the famous West Lake. Ms. Li sought to bring nature into the design, hence the treelike book columns and waterlike reflections.

Ms. Li designed a playful kids’ room with animal-shaped chairs and bookshelves shaped like a pirate ship and a twisting roller coaster. School groups come frequently for lectures on Hangzhou’s history and there’s the occasional experimental theater performance and sleepover, when families pitch tents in the store.