EVERY Wednesday or Friday morning, readers rush in Hong Kong Chung Hwa Book Co.’s bookstore in Yau Ma Tei to see the new arrivals of books. Once a week, various types of new books published on the Chinese mainland hit the shelves in the branch.

Throughout its history of over 100 years, the time-honored brand Chung Hwa has always held the principle of promoting Chinese culture via publishing and selling books. The Yau Ma Tei branch, established in 1979 as a flagship store, best embodies that principle.

The top floor of the three-story store is designed in a classical Chinese style. Dozens of wooden shelves are full of books, most of which are about Chinese culture, and interspersed with different sorts of traditional stationery, such as Chinese writing brushes, inks, Xuan paper, inkstones, etc.

“There are more than 8,000 types of China-themed books,” says Chu Chi-kwan, the store manager. He walks from shelf to shelf and introduces the extensive range of books, including literature, history, philosophy, classical Chinese art and traditional Chinese medicine.

The rich collection appeals to many Hong Kong people, who make the store their first choice when seeking books about Chinese culture. Even if the books pursued are not available in the store, Chu can help the customers place an order from the Chinese mainland as soon as possible.

Among the frequenters are some cultural figures. Lee Chack-fan, a professor at Hong Kong University, recalls visiting the store nearly every week in the 1990s and sometimes even hunting out some favorite items for Jao Tsung-i, a world-renowned Hong Kong scholar of traditional Chinese culture.

A number of overseas Chinese also make special trips here on a regular yearly basis, Chu says. “Our store’s influence goes beyond the neighboring community to cover Hong Kong and even the whole Asia.”

Founded in 1912 in Shanghai by Lufei Kui, an educator and publisher, the publishing agency boasts the gene to enlighten people with the essence of Chinese culture. It is exemplified by its first publication — a series of textbooks which were also the first ones of the kind after the end of more than 2,000 years of feudal rule in China.

In Hong Kong, an affiliated agency of Chung Hwa was set up in 1927, and then became the core base of the company after Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese invaders in World War II. Books printed by Chung Hwa in Hong Kong were shipped to the unoccupied areas on the Chinese mainland, contributing to the mainland’s educational and cultural endeavor during wartime. After the war, Chung Hwa continued to flourish in Hong Kong.

“Many people in Hong Kong admit that they have been reading Chung Hwa’s books while growing up,” says Lai Yiu-keung, deputy editor-in-chief of Hong Kong Chung Hwa. Lai, a book lover in his 50s, recalls that almost every Hong Konger of his generation owns a dictionary published by Hong Kong Chung Hwa.

According to the incomplete statistics collected by Chan Zaak-lam, a researcher of Hong Kong history, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Hong Kong Chung Hwa released around 850 types of books, of which more than one-third were about Chinese civilization.

Since 2012, Lai and his colleagues invited scholars from home and abroad to write introductions and annotations for 50 selected Chinese classical works, including “The Analects of Confucius” and “The Classic of Mountains and Seas.”

“We would like to make full use of Hong Kong’s close ties with both the Chinese mainland and the rest of the world and dig out the contemporary value of ancient Chinese civilization,” Lai says.

In recent years, Hong Kong Chung Hwa has expanded its business beyond publication to attract a younger reader group, including holding lectures for authors to communicate directly with their readers. Lai, who first came to the store as a teenager decades ago, is now happy to return here as a lecture organizer. (Xinhua)