The closure of Eslite Spectrum Corp’s (誠品生活) 24-hour bookstore in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) after 18 years was “far from the end of an era,” thanks to the generations of readers nurtured by the outlet, company chairwoman Mercy Wu (吳旻潔) said yesterday.
At a news conference at the Xinyi store, Wu said that about 1 million people had visited the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer of traditional Chinese books this month.
This included more than 75,000 who visited the store on its penultimate day of operations Saturday, Wu said.
Photo: CNA
The Xinyi store officially closed its doors at 10:30pm yesterday.
Eslite’s Songyan outlet, in the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei, would succeed the Xinyi outlet in staying open 24 hours a day from Jan. 20, next year. In the meantime, Wu said the Eslite bookstore on the fifth floor of the Nanxi store in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) would run around the clock to bridge the gap.
Eslite is leaving its Xinyi premises after landlord Uni-President Group — which plans to transform the store into a shopping mall called “Dream Plaza” — declined to renew the bookseller’s lease.
Wu said she came to the Xinyi store every day to see messages left by customers, of which the top keywords were “youth” and “companionship,” drawing a different picture of the store’s customers from that of the Dunnan store, which closed in 2020.
Comparing the two stores, Wu said customers at the Dunnan store were mostly in their 50s — “which made me feel like a little girl” — while many at the Xinyi store were in their 20s and 30s.
“If the Dunnan store offers the public a place to pursue knowledge, I think the Xinyi store provided them with intellectual
Highlighting a message left by a customer expressing hope that “Taiwan will become an island of reading habits,” Wu said she took comfort knowing “such a remark does not come from a senior who holds a magnifying glass to read.”
“This is a big motivation for [Eslite] continuing to run 24-hour bookstores in the future,” she said.
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by