It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The recession that has hit workers badly is helping them as shoppers - and nowhere more so than in the books market. Buying books in Hong Kong is becoming increasingly enjoyable. Growing competition means a wider selection and cheaper prices. And a major reason is the expansion of one bookstore chain: Page One.
Following the company's success as a specialist seller at Page One: The Designer's Bookshop in Causeway Bay, owner and managing director Mark Tan opened a general bookstore, Page One Twins, in 1997. He has since pledged to open one shop a year - and so far, he's on course.
Page One Twins - a store in two parts - in Causeway Bay's Times Square was Hong Kong's largest until the opening last November of Page One in Kowloon Tong's new mall, Festival Walk. The store is about the same size as the two stores in Times Square put together, but with lower shelving, which allows visitors to look across the shop space, it seems much larger. Assistant manager Philip Tsang Tze-yeung guesses he has about 90,000 titles in the store. Yet, he says, this year's opening, expected in the Ocean Terminal/Harbour City complex in Tsim Sha Tsui, will be about double the size.
He laughs at rumours in the business that Mr Tan is over-stretching himself, that there are not enough readers of English-language books to support such rapid growth. 'We think the market in Hong Kong has great potential,' he says. To hedge its bets, the store also has a sizeable Chinese-language section.
The shoulder-high shelves at the Kowloon Tong store give a sense of space reminiscent of a Western-style shop, compared with the high shelves or small spaces common in other Hong Kong book outlets. Yet Mr Tsang's rough estimate of sales - about 400 books on a weekday and perhaps 4,000 over the weekend - indicates that many customers are only browsing.
The most obvious Western-style feature is the bookstore cafe, the first of its kind in Hong Kong. You have to buy your book before you can bury your nose in it over a drink - the managers baulked at the decadent heights of similar coffee corners in stores in the United States and Britain, where customers can drink and read as-yet-unbought titles.
Other Western-style features include a larger and more eclectic fiction section than in many Hong Kong stores, with some new, young, off-the-wall writers on show. There is also an extensive section of illustrated books on art, fashion and photography, as well as a gay works section, pioneered by Page One in Times Square. One odd area covers war books - nearly all of them focused on the Western Allies' roles in World War II, with scant attention paid to the huge events in the East, particularly China, during that time. Mr Tsang is proud of the talking books section, where a bank of cassette and CD decks allows customers to test the taped versions of classics and new bestsellers.
