Founded in 1993 by the scholar Liu Suli, Wansheng (万圣书园, "All Sages") is the most serious independent bookshop in Beijing and a fixture of the university quarter's intellectual life. Its strength is the humanities and social sciences — history, philosophy, politics, literary theory — shelved with a curator's eye rather than a bookseller's, and it has long been a meeting point for academics and graduate students from the nearby campuses.
After years on Chengfu Road it moved in 2023 to upper floors of the Wudaokou shopping centre. The attached Thinkers' Café (醒客咖啡) is part of the appeal — somewhere to sit with a stack of books and a coffee. Most stock is in Chinese, but the browsing and the atmosphere are the draw whether or not you read the language.