On July 15, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Culture announced that Howard Chen (陳隆昊), who has run the Tonshan Books shop and Tonshan publishing house since 1982, was one of the winners of the 18th Taipei Culture Awards. Although it did not get much media attention, it was heartening news for book lovers.
The announcement was uplifting especially because it came at a time when the Eslite Bookstore chain had just given in to Hong Kong’s censorship demands, supposedly because it is eyeing the Chinese market, to the disappointment of many.
The independent Tonshan Books sits in the basement of a nondescript building in an alley near National Taiwan University. A stone’s throw away stands a four-story Eslite outlet, as bright and shiny as the other stores established by the nation’s largest bookstore chain, which belongs to the Eslite Group.
“We do not decorate it to give it a resplendent appearance, but in this dim basement, we have a sea of learning for you.” This is how Tonshan Books described itself when the “Wenloding Independent Bookstores Alliance (溫羅汀獨立書店聯盟)” was established in 2005 to help small bookshops survive in the face of fierce competition from large bookstore chains and online retailers. The cooperative was named after the first Chinese characters for Wenzhou Street, Roosevelt Road and Dingzhou Road, the streets that comprise the area its members operate in.
With the advent of digital technology creating challenges for the book publishing industry as a whole, small-scale, independent bookshops are finding it more difficult to deal with behemoth competitors to stay afloat.
Having been through the Martial Law era, during which it was a rare supplier of prohibited books — largely leftist and neo-leftist books, or those advocating Taiwanese independence — and a tumultuous period of transition in which consumers increasingly turned to digital devices, Tonshan Books manages to continue to be a haven for people seeking to nurture critical thinking through works of literature, poetry, philosophy, history, art and the political and social sciences.
Contrary to the independent bookshops that have been trying hard to work out ways to defend freedom of the press under both political and commercial pressure, the Eslite Bookstore easily sacrificed democratic values for access to the Chinese market.
The Eslite Bookstore has been reluctant to service niche markets and tends not to stock books that it regards as lacking profit-earning potential.
To pave the way for its venture into the Chinese market, which will see it open its first store in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, the Eslite Bookstore has allegedly bowed to pressure from Beijing to not allow books related to Tibet on shelves in some of its stores in Taiwan last year and Hong Kong this year.
The chain has been further accused of trying to silence its employees by issuing an internal company letter prohibiting them from making comments about the Eslite Bookstore on social media without authorization.
In its stores’ large, hospitable spaces, consumers can browse books separated according to topic, and its Dunnan branch stays open 24 hours. So the Eslite Bookstore chain deserves the common compliment that it is a must-see when visiting Taiwan, especially for Chinese tourists. However, it should also be noted that the bookstore is appealing to Chinese-language readers because it houses books they cannot find in China.
At the heart of book publishing and retail services lies the spirit of protecting people’s freedom to read, listen and see without reservation due to political or economic concerns, and that is one of the hallmarks of a free society.
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