I'm insanely jealous of Taipei because they have 24-hour bookstores. The last time I visited, I took a red-eye flight and headed straight to an Eslite to gorge on books. Even though I had my luggage with me, I still bought five books.
I'm starving in Singapore because there isn't a Chinese language version of Books Actually. I used to think that Bras Basah Complex, known colloquially as "City of Books 书城" and historically the home of Chinese bookstores would remain a haven.
But over the years the bookstores started stocking stationery and of course, assessment books, 10-year series, past-year examination papers aimed at helping students score at standardised tests.
The mothership of the stationery plus test books extravaganza is Popular Bookstore 大众书局. But since it has four floors at Bras Basah, I thought I had a chance at buying the rather popular novel Decoded 解密 by Mai Jia 麦家.
Arguably readers have moved online. Me too - most of my reading is done on my Kindle app. But the question I feel for Singapore is that we don't even read, physical books or e-books. Let alone Chinese books. Chinese is probably regarded as a school subject best left behind after Secondary School or Junior College. Unless of course, that job opportunity requires you to brush it up.
I'm not the first to say this: that's why we Singaporeans are good at passing tests but terrible at things that require creativity and passion. In the end I had to contort myself through all the barriers Amazon China set up to get the book on my Kindle. Then I realised I have a new problem - no one to discuss the book with.
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This was written in 10 minutes. I'm trying to write consistently, and it seems like the way to do that is to convince myself it doesn't take much time.