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Chiayi’s Utopia: a literary salon for the young This is a bookstore born without a shred of commercial intent. By pure chance, it was created by Qiu Siji, owner of Taichung’s Gallery 107, as a gift to Chiayi’s youth—a place to meet, a literary salon. Inside, coffee, music and books converge. Under the artist’s self-proclaimed “impractical” renovation, the sharp-angled triangle of an old house—Autumn Book Room—rises above the traffic on Linye West Road like a vessel that sets sail at sunset, keeping its dreamers awake. Lose yourself in pages, sit wordless in thought, or linger at the bar demanding caffeine and the jolt of contemporary ideas. Autumn Book Room keeps no fixed menu; once aboard, you’re free to improvise. Worth savoring is the atypical bookstore space designed by Hsiao-Yu Tsai Chih-hsien: dialogues between new and old materials, rigid lines blended with soft curves, the staircase’s deliberate tilt, light and shadow falling through the windows, books displayed at will. The climax waits on the third floor: a suspended ship’s engine lodged at the triangle’s apex. At dusk, stand at the prow for a sunset of staggering beauty. Book lovers should hunt like treasure-seekers: every volume comes from founder Qiu Siji’s private library, offered for all to read. If you meet him here, sit down and talk—only then is the literary salon truly open. Photo: Chiayi City Government Tourism and News Department | Photographer: Marg