Sun Li (#孫儷) recently released a book called《遇见你，陪伴你》(Meet You Accompany You). It's a book about Sun Li's love for animals and her life with them. I think it's mostly about dogs and a little bit about cats. Sun Li really likes dogs it seems and has quite a few of them in her home. I think at one point she had up to six dogs but I'm not sure. I happen to watch an interview of it some time ago and I've forgotten the exact number. I've also not really read this book because I really don't have the time to do it yet. I've only read a few lines and paragraphs so I won't be giving any comments or summaries on what was written because I can't just yet.
This book was released in Oct 2018 and it took me a while to figure out how to get a hold of it. I tried bookstores in Singapore first. I even tried Popular but no one carried the book. On a recent trip to Hong Kong, I also checked a bookstore there. And finally I asked a close friend who was on holiday in Taiwan to try a bookstore in Taiwan. All that failed. So I tried Amazon China and I tried getting direct from web-stores in China but that failed too. That's because I don't have a China mobile number or address so I either couldn't get it shipped to Singapore or I couldn't sign up for an account.
So I decided to try and pull a favour and asked one of my friends who had friends in China to see if they could help me out and he was like, "Why don't you use Taobao?" And I was like, "They sell books on Taobao?!?!" Well apparently they do and that's how I signed up for Taobao and made my first Taobao purchase ever. Haha!! :)
The book itself is actually not expensive especially after the discounts. It cost me only about SGD7-8. The shipping and packaging cost me another SGD7-8. So the total cost of this book shipped in from China is slightly above SGD15 which is a very reasonable price for a book shipped in from overseas, in my opinion.
It took about 7 days for the package to reach me and you can track it pretty much all the way till the package reaches Singapore. From there you'll have to wait for them to transfer it to a local courier. In my case, it was Speedpost (SingPost).
The packing is very minimal especially when you compare it to a web-store like CDJapan. But CDJapan specializes in entertainment goods from Japan so unless there is a Japan release of said item, they probably won't carry it. And people who buy from CDJapan are often collectors who will want their orders to reach them in perfect condition. In this case, with this book shipped from Taobao, the book wasn't wrapped in bubble-wrap or something similar, it was simply loosely placed in a thinly layered bubble padded envelope.
While the book survived the journey without any major damage, two of the corners did get dented. Book lovers who like their books to be as perfect as possible might be dismayed by it. I do like my books to arrive in as pristine a condition as possible, so it was a slight let-down. But I do know that Taobao thrives on cheap and if I wanted better packaging, then shipping would also end up being more expensive. So I got over it relatively quickly especially since this was really the only way I could get this book.
The other thing odd about this book was that the shrink wrap around it was actually not properly sealed. I don't know if it means anything but it felt odd to me. I don't think it was the Singapore customs who opened it since the shrink wrap was pretty much intact except at the ends. The customs can't open a book to check that way. Well, at least not properly. Also the padded envelope packaging was fine and didn't seem to have been opened and then re-sealed. So I've no idea why the shrink wrap wasn't properly shrink wrapped.
Anyway, I took off the shrink wrap and the dust-cover isn't full on glossy, it's just slightly reflective.
The binding is kind of interesting.
I've honestly never seen binding like this before. Usually its covered up and not "naked" like this so I was a little surprised. It also makes me nervous about its durability. So I think it might be a good idea to read this book like one reads comics, with one hand on the spine and without opening the book too widely.
On the inside fold of the dust jacket, they actually name all the dogs that are featured on the cover. I thought that that was kind of cute.
That's what the inside covers of the book looks like without the dust cover.
There is a printed autograph from Sun Li on the page immediately after the cover page. It would have been nice to get an actual autograph. Recently, Sun Li's been holding a few autograph sessions in China. I saw photos of the sessions on Weibo (click me, click me, click me for some photos). Sadly, I do not live in China so the possibility of getting this book autographed for real is practically zero. Since beggars can't be choosers, this is good enough for me.
This is the inside title page which is nice and readable.
The content page on the other hand was actually a little hard to read. The white text shows up a little faintly against the light gray background and the lack of a greater contrast makes it a little hard to read especially when light falls on it at certain angles.
The section headings have English titles accompanying the Chinese ones but unfortunately for those who cannot read Chinese, that's pretty much the extent of the amount of English in this book.
This book itself is pretty awesome for fans. The quality of the paper is not bad. And it's chocked full of lovely full colored photos of Sun Li with animals. The book is about 300 or so pages long if you include content pages etc. There is a lot of text but there are also so many photos that it could even serve as a photo book of sorts for fans who cannot read Chinese. There are many pages that just feature photos of her without any accompanying text. And there are many more pages that have photos accompanying the text. Even though there are text-only pages throughout the book, it seems like they don't exceed more than 5-6 pages in a row before there are more photos.
I shot a few photos as an example of some of the pages in the book but as usual, with most of the unboxings that I do on the blog, I much rather you buy the product itself if you can.
At the end of the book, there is a pull-out page that's attached to the book. This pull-out page contains tips on how to look after your pets.
For those of us who do read and understand Chinese, but aren't very good at it, you should not have too many problems with the level of Chinese in the book. It's pitched at a comfortable reading level for most people, I think.
I think that if you're a Sun Li fan, you will most likely like this book. Most fans would be very happy to own it especially since it's not particularly expensive. My only concern is the binding, I don't have full faith in it. But as long as you treat the book with some care, it should be fine and those lovely photos should more than make up for it. :)
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