Fate of Beijing Branches Unknown as Page One Shutters Last of Hong Kong Bookstores

The fate of one of Beijing’s last bastions of English books is up in the air today as its parent company in Hong Kong has closed the doors on its remaining outlets and gone into receivership.

Page One Bookstore, which has locations in Taikoo Li, China World and Indigo Mall, just yesterday shut its remaining branches in Hong Kong -- once its most successful market -- apparently under the burden of enormous losses.

We called all Beijing locations late Friday afternoon, and each said they remained open and had no knowledge of an imminent closure. No one answered the store’s Beijing HQ phone number listed on its website or replied to emails, so further confirmation was not possible by the time of this post.

If they were to close in Beijing, it would come as no surprise. The number of stores in Hong Kong has been dwindling for years, and recent visits to the Sanlitun and Indigo locations here in Beijing revealed some half-empty shelves, indicating that stock was not being replenished.

In this era of digital devices, online bookstores and on-demand home delivery, it's not a shock that massive bookstores in high-rent locations in what is now one of the world's most expensive cities are not terribly viable business models, but a closure would signal the sad end of a short-lived era in Beijing.

Founded in Singapore in 1983, Page One made its mark in the late 90s and early 2000s in Hong Kong, where at its peak it had 10 locations. At that time it was not just a local attraction, but a key stop for any Asia-based expat’s Hong Kong visa run.

Pre-Olympics, we expats in Beijing pined for any sort of English-language bookstore that could give us English reading material and that luxurious, literate feeling of browsing. By 2011, 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.

The Beijing Page Ones have been fun to browse and have tried to make a niche for themselves with a wide range of high-end books as well as offering all manner of other literary and non-literary knick-knacks. The Taikoo Li branch also has a coffee shop and even made a very short-lived attempt at staying open 24 hours.

As a parent, my daughter and I have spent many afternoons in one location of Page One or another, browsing their (relatively, for Beijing) enormous English-language book collections.

The books were often overpriced (particularly imported ones), but I’d buy one anyway on each visit, figuring I got not only a book out of the deal, but also an afternoon of free babysitting with my kid safely protected from over-exposure to otherwise ubiquitous digital devices.

This would not be the first of Hong Kong’s prominent bookstores to come and fail in Beijing; Chaterhouse Books had a short-lived run for a few years in the basement of The Place from about 2007 to 2010.

Should it close, it comes on the heels of a generally bad time for English-language things in Beijing: Earlier this week we heard that The Bookworm would be indefinitely postponing its annual book festival, and earlier in November we were informed that one of our esteemed competitors in the expat rag segment, City Weekend, was either shutting down or being sold off to an uncertain buyer. (Lest we be accused of being all gloom and doom, there is one bright spot on the English language horizon, and that is the launch of the new Beijing-based English-language literary mag Spittoon).

Here's to hopes that Page One stays open, if only till Christmas so we can pay a last few visits and land a few gifts for the people on our lists.

Image: Wikipedia