As readers leaf through an antique book's yellowish pages, it gives off an undeniably musty scent. Bibliophiles, or book collectors, say the stronger it smells, the better it is.
Paul Feain, organiser of the Hong Kong International Antiquarian Bookfair, shares this appetite for old texts. For him, books are a record of the passage of time, and allow him to travel to the past.
The Australian set the book fair ball rolling when he opened a bookstore in Sydney in 1980. The shop comprised his own huge collection of books and he sold all of them. He then decided to specialise in antiquarian books which were at least 100 years old. He would also sell valuable publications from the 20th century.
Feain thinks there is a kind of magic associated with owning an old book.
'You can imagine the author sitting down and writing the book 100 years ago,' he says. 'You can imagine those who have owned and read it over the years. You can imagine the impact the book might have [had] on society.'
His shop's shelves are crammed with some 40,000 books covering topics such as his native country, aborigines and crime fiction, and more recently, China and Hong Kong.
Feain sees books come and go every day, but the thrill of getting his hands on a new volume never falters.