In 1938, the patriotic entrepreneur Yan Zizhen, founder of the Yongchangxiang business chamber, donated 62,181 national currency yuan to build Xizhou’s first public library. He named it Cangyi, after his retirement alias. Completed in September 1939 after twenty months of labor, the building opened on January 1, 1940. Writer Lao She visited the town, praising its clear, running street-waters and scholarly air, noting the library's marble archway with gold-leaf lettering.

Today, the library stands on the east side of Zhengyi Culture Square, opposite the Ziyunshan Temple. A century-old banyan tree casts cool shade over the entrance. The structure follows an east-west axis, built with a traditional Bai ethnic post-and-beam timber frame. Sweeping eaves, detailed dougong brackets, grey roof tiles, and white plaster walls define its exterior. Inside, the original nineteen rooms cover one thousand square meters across a five-mu site.

On the first floor, sturdy, smooth wooden columns support shelves holding twenty thousand volumes, including specialized collections on the Thousand-Year Nanzhao and Yunnan Poetry. Upstairs, a public reading salon accommodates twenty readers within a deep blue color palette. In the quiet rear yard, the sweet scent of wild orchids, camellias, and rustling bamboo fills the air. Here, visitors find the rough stone monument dedicated to Yan Zizhen, its surface bearing a historical inscription written by the Bai scholar Zhao Jianan.

Decommissioned in 1953, the library suffered decades of neglect. A government restoration in 2019 revived the space, reopening it on July 24, 2021. It now operates as a modern bookstore and a designated Sojourn Library, hosting poetry recitals and workshops for regional crafts like Dali Wamao clay cat sculptures. The building remains a quiet sanctuary where the past continues to speak.