The Tin Yuen Book House (田園書屋) - just one of several bookstores along Sai Yeung Choi Street (西洋菜街) in Mong Kok.

Saturday evening

Up one flight of stairs, then another.  The crowd outside is still noisy but disappearing.  It’s getting warm, almost uncomfortably warm.

Finally, doors.  One leads into a hair salon; the other leads to a bookstore.  If you know me well, you’ll know which one I was looking for.

I step in.  It’s quiet, save for the tentative footsteps of other visitors who are browsing the shelves.  And seeing as this is a bookstore, I begin to examine the shelves myself.

On any other day, and probably in any other place, I would spend hours at a bookstore like this.  The shelves are packed with titles of all kinds – fiction and literature, culture/civilization (largely Chinese but occasionally Western), health and well-being, philosophy, history, art, sciences, social sciences, reference works… And then there are the peculiarities (or rather, shifts in emphasis) that come only with Hong Kong and other Asian bookstores – there are even more shelves devoted to books for learning English and Japanese, and scores of workbooks and guides for Hong Kong schoolchildren (though I suspect it’s the parents who will be more excited to browse this section than the students themselves).

It’s the latter category of shelves that grabs my attention, and once I find the section I scan rapidly.  Colors of all hues, shades and tints alike.  But after five minutes, I give up.  I move on to the section devoted to languages…no dice.  One last check of the culture and civilization books? Nothing.  I quietly maneuver my way back to the door and leave.

There are, quite simply, no books on how to read – or at least improve one’s reading of – Chinese.  Not the people, not the culture – but the language itself.

Sai Yeung Choi Street (西洋菜街).  The name reflects, as street and neighborhood names increasingly do, its location in the past: as an area of watercress (西洋菜) cultivation.  Another name that’s become lost in translation, but temporally more so than linguistically – there are no watercress fields here, save for the truckloads that likely arrive to be sold to grocers and restaurants. It is a street that’s tucked away in the crowded but booming district that is Mong Kok (旺角), seemingly the epicenter of all that can be bought in Kowloon.

Not that there’s any real contradiction between the street and its surroundings, though.  For Sai Yeung Choi Street is, like its neighbors, teeming with pedestrian (tourist and local alike) and vehicular traffic, with flashing neon signs, with middle-to-higher-scale fast food chains and restaurants, with street performers…with vitality.  Energy.  Youth.  Life.

But that’s not what I’m looking for on this Saturday evening.  And it is not by coincidence that I chose “Watercress Street” of all places to immerse myself (again) into Hong Kong.

No – I am, in fact, looking for bookstores.  More specifically, I’m looking for anything that will help me read.

A second sign on this street points toward a bookstore.  Third floor: never at ground level, because here books do not reflect the spirit of Mong Kok or its environs.  I step inside.  Another musky staircase, room enough for two people – one going up, the other going down.  No one here tonight though.

Inside the door.  Another casual browse of the shelves.  The language books are no different – all advertise, in one form or another, American English accents (Hong Kong has long been accustomed to British English, after all), improved reading skills (for the IELTS and the TOEFL, not to mention college entrance exams), and vocabulary enrichment.  It’s everything I’ve been looking for…except I’m fairly confident I’ve mastered these three skills already.

In English, that is.

The children’s section is no different from the previous bookstore.  I leave.

Bookstores #3 and #4 (not their names, mind you) are conveniently housed in the same building.  Wonderfully efficient, and they’re located on separate floors.  I squeeze out of the bustling crowd and pull myself into the entrance.

The third has no one inside, save for an elderly couple and a younger worker (grandson?) conversing behind the counter.  They are the only entities here (besides the lights, I suppose) that are granting this place any sign of life.  Curiously, the books emanate a pinkish tint that gets magnified by the lights.

And no wonder – these are mostly animes and chick lit.  I leave.

Bookstore #4 is the most promising thus far: it claims to feature textbooks that are suited for middle- and high-school students (中學生).  Yet that is the obvious catch – my literacy level is nowhere near that of a secondary school student.  (Although I’m bemused by my greater competency in pretty much every other subject that’s on offer here.)  Stepping inside throws cold water onto my hopes, though.  Just two people: myself, and the lone worker – he looks about the same age as me but clearly no longer has any need (and probably any interest) in the books he’s looking after.  The “bookstore” is little more than a haphazard collection of stacks, boxes, and “shelves” of workbooks for every subject imaginable: literature, English, culture/civilization, math, biology, chemistry, physics….I leave quickly.

The fifth and last option.  Top floor of another crowded building.  No hesitation (but a little exhaustion) as I ascend the steps.

The Guofeng Tang Book House (國風堂書屋), which features a collection of books imported from mainland China and Taiwan. If only I could read them.

It’s a dimly lit bookstore, but there are several people (middle-aged men and women) browsing the shelves.  The couple behind the counter are trying to translate an English document into written Chinese, although it seems the husband is frustrated by the inadequacy of colloquial Cantonese to equate with English (mostly business) formalisms.

The children’s section, meanwhile is virtually nonexistent; the language section offers Chinese language instruction for non-English speakers.  Which is remarkable in and of itself, because I’ve been faintly curious as to what materials other (mostly European) learners use to study Chinese.  I make a quick circuit of the shelves – there are, notably, quite a few art books here, but visual as they may be they’re not what I’m looking for.  Out the door I go.

It is the last option on Sai Yeung Choi Street, in what was once a watercress field.  The crowds are still lively (it’s about 9 p.m.), unsurprisingly.  Saturday evening in Mong Kok, the epicenter of Kowloon’s youth and energy.

I move back into the crowd and slow my pace, adjusting back to the stop-and-go of pedestrian movement.  I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed – to walk into so many bookstores without even feeling the compulsion to purchase something and leave in triumph, to go through the motions that characterize most of my visits to these places back at home.

But this isn’t the same as home.  Not yet.  This is Hong Kong, and if I am to have any hope of understanding its people, their culture, and their lives, then I must keep reading.

Whether or not that will take place in English or in Chinese  – that remains uncertain.

I still hope it can be done in both.