Anyone in Causeway Bay two weeks ago on Saturday would have found its streets even more crowded than usual. This time, something other than the usual store openings was attracting attention: Eslite, Taiwan's largest bookstore chain, was opening its first overseas branch in Hong Kong, launching perhaps the largest bookstore in the city.

While a third of Eslite's selection is in English, the store is distinguished by its attention to Taiwanese publications. For example, a full collection of Taiwan's most popular illustrator and storybook writer Jimmy Liao's works are placed next to the main entrance. For avid readers, Eslite brings a broader selection of works to our city.

The interest in Eslite's giant bookstore is only the latest representation of Hong Kong's hunger for reading. The Hong Kong Book Fair is one of the largest book fairs in Asia. This year's fair, despite the effects of Typhoon Vicente, attracted over 900,000 visitors. Over 75 percent of purchases were of fiction and literature. It is not just commercial bookstores that do well; Hong Kong's public libraries, at last count, have almost 4,000,000 registered borrowers, or around half of Hong Kong's population.

While Hong Kong may hold a deep interest in reading, that interest is not centralized in any one event or institution. Eslite and its competitors are great additions to Hong Kong's commercial landscape; their selections are still determined by commercial considerations. The book fair may be growing in stature, but it occurs only once a year. And Hong Kong's public library system, while professional and widely-used, was never meant to put the city "on the map".

So, how can Hong Kong raise its reading culture to the next level? Perhaps the answer is to build something that Hong Kong lacks compared to other global cities like New York and London: a truly world-class library. By "world-class", I mean a library with something unique, such as a specialized collection relevant to Hong Kong's current and historical role, or such facilities as high-resolution electronic viewers connected to the digitized versions of the world's other great libraries' collections. Since not all our fellow citizens will be able to travel to see their rare manuscripts, perhaps we can bring them - virtually - to Hong Kong.

Governments always subsidize "cultural consumption" to some extent, but a library may be the best value for money in terms of cultural "investment". Just consider how many people this new library could serve over the years for the capital it took to build it. In a city where space and silence is always at a premium, the library is a place where one can read in relative quiet comfort.

Most importantly, libraries - unlike most other cultural institutions - are free: anyone, regardless of wealth, can take advantage of the many facilities a major library can offer. For quite apart from its literary collection, it automatically becomes a cultural nexus, or exchange, for the wide variety of cultural activities it would generate, and attract.

The obvious location would be to place such a library in the West Kowloon Cultural District, but we should instead see the construction of a world-class library as an opportunity to revitalize a district that is normally overlooked. East Kowloon, Kowloon Bay or Northern District, all within easy access by public transport, could benefit from such a landmark facility. It can certainly complement the world-class cultural facilities expected to be built in West Kowloon, but they need not be sited in close proximity.

It would not be difficult to build such a library, even in as densely-packed a city as Hong Kong. A library can be mostly underground and still keep its functionality. If it were located not too far from the waterfront, what could be more intellectually pleasurable than sitting in a reading room with a giant window overlooking the harbor? What other city would have a library with such pleasing scenic views?

A world-class library in Hong Kong will also be well-placed to feature unique collections and exhibitions. I am sure that, as a cosmopolitan, multicultural city, Hong Kong would be able to present numerous unique collections in such a facility. A world-class library would help to put us prominently on the cultural map.

The author is former secretary for home affairs of the HKSAR government.

(HK Edition 08/22/2012 page3)