A New Page for Page One: Changes Abound For the BJ Bookstore
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If you've walked through Sanlitun in the past couple of weeks, you may have been shocked to see Page One's windows plastered over with white and orange decals and its door firmly shut. Thankfully, the Taikooli bookstore is only under major renovation, which had originally been planned for February last year. Not so great is that it won't reopen again until sometime in September.
The store, which originally opened in 2013, was last renovated three years ago and welcomed over 4,000 new English titles to its shelves. With any luck, another expansion of its foreign language stock is in the works.Don't worry, Sanlitun's best bookstore will be back
Worse news for book lovers near Jiangtai is that Page One's Indigo outlet closed permanently on Apr 22. In a note on their WeChat account, the company explains that the closure was in fact "a belated farewell" as their contract was originally set to expire in early 2020 but COVID-19 made them reconsider and postpone. On the flip side, the same post alludes to the opening of the brand's first hutong-adjacent store, Page One Huayuan Hutong, set to launch in July in Xidan.
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Page One's new two-floor Wudaokou store is now open for business
Despite the Indigo closure, these new happenings seem to indicate that Page One is in a good place right now. That hasn't always been the case for the Singapore-founded bookstore, with a level of uncertainty surrounding the chain's fate lingering after the closure of its Hong Kong parent company and all of its Fragrant Harbor stores – once its most successful market – in 2016.
At the time, we wrote, "If they were to close in Beijing, it would come as no surprise. The number of stores in Hong Kong has been dwindling for years, and recent visits to the Sanlitun and Indigo locations here in Beijing revealed some half-empty shelves, indicating that stock was not being replenished."
Luckily, we were wrong then because following the closure of The Bookworm nearly 18 months ago, Page One has become the de facto store for English language books and while, yes, you can find much more online, its loss would be another hit to Beijing's brick and mortar literary outlets.
Keep up with all of Page One's news and events via their official WeChat (ID: PageOne).READ: Here's Your Beijing Spring Reading List
Photos: Cindy Jenkins, Page One
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