Page One SLT Unveils Revamped First Floor and Fresh Stock of 4,000 English Titles

Fret not, Beijing bookworms. If you passed by Page One's Sanlitun branch recently and saw it in a sordid state, with barren walls and laborers toiling about, you’ll be relieved to hear that the bookshop was only undergoing renovations, rather than joining a slew of other Beijing institutions that have shut down as part of the city's Great Brickening beautification campaign.  

Read more about Beijing's business busting Great Brickening campaign here.

Instead, the shop’s first floor will reopen today (Dec 6), with a fresh stock of 4,000 English books from Penguin publishing house. Assistant shop manager Qin “Teresa” Haoxia says these first floor renovations come on the heels of changes on the second floor earlier this year.

Qin adds that the upgrades were long overdue, seeing as Page One’s Sanlitun branch has been open for more than five years. The spiffed-up space will address customers' complaints about a shortage of seating, offering up plenty of comfortable new wooden furniture and a café upstairs where patrons can leaf through titles over a cup of java.

The bookshop has remained tenacious even as its Hong Kong counterparts closed in 2016. At the time, we reported on how the chain was founded in Singapore in 1983, before going on to become widely popular in Hong Kong in the late '90s and early 2000s with a peak of 10 locations. That helped Page One not only become "just a local attraction but a key stop for any Asia-based expat’s Hong Kong visa run."

That article went on to detail the lack of such English bookstores in the Chinese capital pre-Olympics, and how "when Page One finally landed on our shores, we were both proud and excited to see something of its stature give it a go in Beijing. Page One initially expanded to China with a Hangzhou store in 2010. Its Beijing debut was in China World in April 2011; it quickly expanded to Taikoo Li in 2012 and finally into the heart of Sanlitun in 2013."

And while the revamped space will certainly be a boon for look bibliophiles, the newly stocked 4,000 titles couldn't have come at a better time as Beijing expat seek out stocking stuffers.

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Photos: Michael Cormack, Doug Lewis