University of Hong Kong campus bookstore shuts, to the dismay of academics and student union head
- The loss of the University Bookstore, a fixture at the Pok Fu Lam campus for five decades, is felt keenly by academics and the HKU students’ union president
- It had lost ground to online competitors and students’ practice of sharing downloads of books, but other English-language bookshops have found ways to adapt
The last day of 2020 was also the last day for the oldest campus bookshop in Hong Kong.
A fixture at the University of Hong Kong in Pok Fu Lam for five decades, Swindon Books closed its store selling English-language academic and general titles, which had become irrelevant in an era when most students source books more cheaply online or rely on shared PDF copies.
On Thursday, the campus was quiet because of the holidays as forlorn Swindon staff cleared remaining items from the 500 square metre space at the university’s Centennial Campus, to which the University Bookstore had moved in 2013 from a smaller – but more popular – space in the Run Run Shaw Building on the main campus.
Two undergraduates who live on campus were unmoved by the store’s closure. Victoria Seo and Anderson Shin, both second-year students from South Korea, said they had never set foot in it. “I just get books from Books Depository normally. It’s cheaper and I always find what I want,” said Shin, who is studying risk management. Books Depository is a UK-based online bookseller that offers free worldwide shipping.
But the president of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union, Edy Jeh Tsz-lam, said: “Having a bookshop is a basic requirement for a university.”