Crowds flock to independent Hong Kong bookstore before shutters close

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.

Have a Nice Stay was formed in 2022 by a group of former Stand News journalists and veteran media professionals who lost their jobs following the wave ⁠of closures ​of independent local news outlets after ⁠the imposition of the security law. In a July 14 Facebook post, the store said it would close on August 30, citing poor business performance, financial pressures, ⁠uncertainty over its premises and Hong Kong's wider social environment.

"Over the past six months we have faced financial deficits, though at times we managed ​to scrape by. Looking at Hong Kong's broader economic situation, we can only pessimistically conclude that it will become increasingly ⁠difficult to carry on." RED LINES AND CLOSURES

It said that elusive "red lines" were also a factor. "Government officials have made it clear that they will not specify which ⁠books ​may or may not be sold ... We cannot read every book, nor are we able to determine which books may be considered problematic".

Earlier this year, National Security Police targeted three other bookstores that were accused of displaying or selling publications with seditious ⁠intent and arrested several people. However, the city's most high-profile bookseller incident occurred in late 2015, when five publishers and booksellers associated with ⁠the Causeway Bay Books store ⁠disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The store had been famous for selling gossipy, politically sensitive paperbacks about mainland Chinese leaders. All five later emerged in mainland Chinese custody and delivered televised confessions related to their alleged offences.