It's a regular Tuesday night. On the second floor of a commercial building at Dunhua South Road in Taipei, readers are lost in their books while more than two dozen people line up at the cash counter to pay for the books. And more people are filing into the 24-hour bookstore. Who would think it's already 10?
Li Mingxia is one of the late-night visitors. Li came to Taiwan on an eight-day package tour with her husband and friends, their first visit to the island. She has bought a basket of books, all biographies of modern Chinese leaders not available on the mainland such as those on Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. Li is thrilled with her find.
Eslite, which opened its first store in March 1989, is now the biggest bookstore chain in Taiwan. It has 39 stores across the island. With a collection of 250,000 titles and 2.7 million copies of Chinese-language books and a reader-friendly atmosphere - soothing music, cosy sofas, arrangements to sit on the floor and read as long as the store is open, convenient locations - the chain is a hub of intellectual life in Taiwan and a temple for Chinese intellectuals.
Li is not the only pilgrim from Beijing tonight. A young couple, who prefer to be called Mr and Mrs Huang, take turn to pose for photos at the new-release section.
Music teacher Jenny Hui, from Hong Kong, says she likes shopping at Eslite for reference books on classical music because she cannot find them in Hong Kong.
Cashing in on this popularity among Chinese intellectuals, the company plans to open stores in Hong Kong and on the mainland next.