From solitary confinement in China to self-exile in Taiwan: Inside a Hong Kong bookshop owner's fight to keep the free press alive

• Lam Wing-kee relocated Causeway Bay Books from Hong Kong to Taipei.
• The bookstore, known for selling books critical of the Chinese Communist Party, moved to a cheaper location in Taipei.
• Despite slow sales, Lam remains committed to promoting freedom and democracy in Taiwan.

Running a bookstore is a tough business anywhere in today's digital world — running one that sells books critical of the Chinese Communist Party even more so.

Lam Wing-kee, who helms Causeway Bay Books, an independent bookstore in Taipei, knows this well.

"I am losing money every month," the 68-year-old told me in Mandarin over a can of Taiwan Beer at his bookstore on a balmy afternoon in late June.

It was a few months before his shop would be relocating — Lam's lease was coming up, and the landlord wanted his shop back. Lam was seated behind a desk that served as both the payment counter and a separator for the top bunk bed where he sleeps.

The acute lack of customers was somewhat surprising, given that Causeway Bay Books is pretty well-known.

It all started in Hong Kong

For 20 years, Lam founded and managed the original bookstore in Hong Kong — set up in and named after a vibrant district on Hong Kong Island. The shop was popular with mainland tourists because it sold books banned in China.

It closed in 2015 following a spate of alarming disappearances involving its five shareholders and employees, who, it turns out, were detained by mainland authorities.

Lam spent five months in solitary confinement and was released in 2016 after he confessed to illegal book trading. He said he was forced to confess and read off a script, according to a written statement he gave to the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China in May 2017.

"They just kept brainwashing me," Lam said of his time in detention.

Setting up shop in Taiwan

In 2019, Lam left for Taiwan in a sort of self-imposed exile after Hong Kong proposed a bill that would allow people to be extradited to the mainland. A year later, in 2020, Lam reopened the bookstore in Taiwan — a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its territory.

The reopening was funded by a donation drive to restart the shop that has become a public space for critical discourse and a symbol of democracy.

Now in a new Taipei location, just a few miles from where I visited in June, Causeway Bay Books has become a landmark for Hong Kongers seeking a glimpse of the freewheeling homeland they once knew or for people seeking alternative Chinese-language reading critical of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's regime.

While independent bookstores like Lam's are relatively small businesses, they connect a community whose information is increasingly restricted by Beijing, both online and in person. Taiwanese stores operate in an uncertain time as China amplifies nearby military activities.

"Owners of independent bookstores aren't doing it for profit, they don't even earn that much money when things are running smoothly," Ben Cheng, an associate professor of political sociology at Fo Guang University in Taiwan, told me. "But they do it to accomplish certain ideals."

It's about more than just selling books

During my visit, it was clear sales were slow.

Lam seemed down when talking about the business. He complained that he wasn't making enough to cover the 30,000 New Taiwan Dollars, or $930, a month rent.

"I would get more customers after some media reports, but it would quieten down after a while," he said.

It doesn't help that Hong Kongers who go to his shop have become fearful about buying anything to bring home.

Lam was considering closing his shop altogether.

His friend — who also runs a bookshop in Taipei — changed his mind: "He told me: 'I don't care about what you do, but this bookshop is not just about you.'

In the three hours I spent at Causeway Bay Books' former premises, I only spotted three people in the store, all tourists. They walked into the shop through an entryway piled with memorabilia from anti-government protests in Hong Kong — all of this has been moved to his new shop.

But the people who go to Causeway Bay Books — whose mainstays are books on politics and history — know what they are looking for.

One of the three tourists, a 27-year-old Chinese national now living in the US, bought a book about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

He told me he was surprised to find himself the sole customer in the shop.

The design architect, who asked to be identified by only his last name, Wang, to protect his privacy, said he was visiting the shop as it's well-known among the Chinese diaspora.

"They have Chinese-language books here that you can't really find anywhere else," Wang said.

When Lam found out Wang had been living in the US since he graduated from college, he boisterously told the younger man: "Don't return to China anymore!"

Two other tourists arrived about an hour later: a middle-aged mother and her young adult daughter.

The pair recognized Lam straightaway and chatted with the bookseller like old friends in Cantonese — the most commonly spoken language in Hong Kong — and browsed the section about the special administrative region's anti-government protests.

Lam also hosts discussions and forums with authors and thinkers, turning the bookstore into a platform for public discourse. He said that it's common for Hong Kongers in Taiwan to drop in occasionally for a chat or for advice.

Like Lam's friend said to him, the shop isn't just his alone. It has become a public space and one of refuge for some.

Given that Causeway Bay Books is so intertwined with Lam's life, it seemed unlikely he would close down the shop without a fight. "I have few needs, and the donation drive to restart the shop raised 6 million New Taiwan Dollars, so I will keep running the shop as long as I can," he said.

Nearly three months after my June visit, the bookseller reopened the shop at another location in central Taipei, this time near the National Taiwan Normal University.

He said he was hoping to get more customers at this new location on the ground floor, at about two-thirds the rent — but also two-thirds the size.

It is still where he lives and sleeps.

Hong Kong's indie bookstores stay the course

Compared to the remaining independent bookstores in Hong Kong, things at Causeway Bay Books in Taipei aren't so bad.

In March, popular indie bookstore Mount Zero shut down following repeated inspections from Hong Kong authorities.

At the time, owners of independent bookstores told Voice of America that they have been subject to more frequent government oversight, such as for fire safety and taxation. The relevant agencies told the media outlet that they had received complaints about suspected violations but found none following investigations.

Hong Kong — a Special Administrative Region under China — implemented a sweeping new national security law in March, a move that critics say further curtails rights and freedom in the territory. Hong Kong's government rejects this view.

Despite challenges — including Hong Kong's first national security law in 2020 — the number of independent bookstores rose from under 50 to 87 between 2019 to 2022, said Cheng, the professor.

Cheng, who interviewed independent bookstore operators in Hong Kong for his research, said some Hong Konger indie bookstore owners are driven by a sense of mission to offer non-mainstream books — especially since libraries in Hong Kong have pulled books that may breach the national security law from their shelves.

So, unless Beijing actively cracks down on indie bookstores, new entrants would still enter the market to keep anti-establishment books in circulation, said Cheng.

"If indie bookstores disappear completely in Hong Kong, that's when we know that the freedom of speech has been completely obliterated," he said.

Pushing for change in Taiwan

Freedom is why Causeway Bay Books' Lam chooses to stay in Taiwan, even if he is on his own. He is divorced, and his two adult sons still live unharassed in Hong Kong.

"Hong Kong is like mainland China now. You shouldn't call it Hong Kong but Chinese Hong Kong," Lam said.

Although he still misses Hong Kong from time to time, he says it's no longer the place he once knew.

Lam said he values the freedom and democracy Taiwan has afforded and appreciates its comprehensive national healthcare system — which is considered one of the best in the world.

He is now pushing for Taiwan's independence because only then will the island remain free, he said.

He reckons major changes will not happen in his lifetime, but he wants people to read more and think more critically.

Lam is hopeful that Taiwan, as a democracy, can progress in the longer term — as long as it remains free from Beijing, which has been stepping up military activities and propaganda efforts around the island.

"We can't change China, so we must protect Taiwan," he said.