Crowds flock to independent Hong Kong bookstore before shutters close

HONG KONG: People queued on Sunday to chat, browse and bid farewell to an independent Hong Kong bookstore before it shut, following a July police raid over alleged seditious books and what the store owners said was a “poor business performance”.

Snaking lines formed outside the bookstore, Have a Nice Stay, stretching down the staircase in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Only 20 people at a time were allowed to enter the roughly 600 square-foot space.

The city’s once-flourishing independent bookstore industry has rapidly dwindled since Beijing imposed sweeping national security legislation on the city in 2020.

Many offered a broader range of political and social titles than mainstream retailers and became important spaces for civil society through book talks and workshops. “We no longer have the ability, or perhaps the courage, to continue fulfilling the mission of using books to share knowledge drawn from a diversity of perspectives,” it said in an online statement last month.