Recounting a chapter in story of Chinese bookstores

The Guanghwa bookstore in London's Chinatown, set up in 1971, was once the only place in the UK selling books published on the Chinese mainland. [Photo provided to China Daily]

During the 1970s and 1980s, Guanghwa Company, a bookstore in London's Chinatown, received parcels twice a month from mail trains arriving at King's Cross Station.

The trains carried precious material for Sinologists in Britain, who had little access to China, says K.C. Tang, now in his 70s, as he recalls how he set up a Chinese bookstore in London.

"China and the UK didn't have a very good relationship at that time," says the Hong Kong-born Tang, who set up the store in 1971.

"I had to face a lot of pressure. Today's bookstores may see themselves as businesses, but Guanghwa was a career for me.

"What we offered were not commodities. It was the dignity of the Chinese people."

Guanghwa was then the only place in the UK selling books published on the Chinese mainland, says Tang, gradually turning emotional amid the nostalgia.

Tang migrated to London as a chef at the age of 18, but after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) started in China, he found that increasing numbers of British people wanted to read Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, commonly known as the "Little Red Book".

He once sold 2,000 copies of the Little Red Book in Hyde Park over a weekend.