I started reading this book called Swimming Back to Trout River, and it gave a fictional narrative about its characters living through the Cultural Revolution in China. It’s a moving story about people, and it also made me think about China as a destination to visit one day.
I recalled the first time I wanted to visit China, and it was after reading the book Red Dust, by Ma Jian. It was an autobiographical recount of his time in China before he fled to Hong Kong. I haven’t gone to China still, but the book had made me think really hard about how we interact with the world as a country, and a citizen of a country.
But the focus of this post is about the bookstore I got this book from: EMF.
I can’t recall what EMF stood for, but I used to go there very often. My parents had brought me there the first few times, when I was young. I don’t remember when was the first time, because I was too young to remember. But I knew afternoons in Holland Village Shopping Centre, whether weekday or weekend, would always include a visit to EMF.
Later I would go on my own, in my teenage years. It was a place where I would find interesting covers, or editions. My first few Murakami books started from the EMF bookshelves, because they had the Vintage series designed by Chip Kidd. I would only find out later about Chip Kidd, but these book covers started an obsession with Japanese literature.
Between EMF and Kinokuniya for book purchases, I went to EMF almost purely because of the possibility of returning the book. You could buy the book at the stated price, but if you returned it, you would get a certain amount of money back. It was paying for rental basically. But if you enjoyed the book enough, you could keep it. I kept a lot of them.
Their section for Japanese literature was tucked away at a corner, past the middle aisle that held the shopkeeper’s view. It was usually to the right, and I could ask aloud if there were other options of this or that book.
Ma Jian was in the stack of Asian Literature, next to the Japanese literature. And with those introductions, I continued to have my growing enjoyment of reading.
and now, all I have left is Kinokuniya.
I’ll do a Kinokuniya post soon perhaps. The outlet closest to my heart was the Liang Court one, but more on that next time.