Daily life｜Introduction｜From the library of "One Punch Man"

By the way, I saw a photo album of Professor Zhang Canhui on Facebook a few days ago. Yesterday, I deliberately visited this bookstore with a very interesting name.

The founder of "One Punch Library" is Pang Yiming. Hong Kong people will notice that he may have initiated the social action of "Don't Help Real Estate Developers" (not patronizing big real estate developers for a year) earlier, refusing to patronize chain stores, replacing the MTR with bicycles, and supporting local agricultural products and daily necessities , in order to resist the monopoly of large real estate developers in people's livelihood.

The name "One Punch" is reminiscent of the animation of "One Punch Man", so I went to Google to find out the origin of the store name. In addition to the fact that the store manager and One Punch Man are both bald, the origin of the name is also inspired by "One Punch Man":

We can use the book to punch us, and we can also let the book punch us and wake up the readers! (1)

There are many interesting places in this bookstore. The first is where the bookstore is. "One Punch" is located in a very old tenement building in Sham Shui Po, one of the poorest areas in Hong Kong. But because it is a tenement building, this bookstore should have one of the best spaces among independent bookstores.

However, the bookstore did not fill up with books because of the large space, but instead left about half of the space for different activities, such as lectures and new book sharing sessions. The first time I went there was a singer's support group at the party (it seems to be the Lin Jiaqian support group). After that, there were also different online and offline lectures. For example, there will be a lecture on "Anti-War. Ukraine" tonight.

Second, independent bookstores in Hong Kong often offer discounts to attract readers (some bookstores even offer 20% to 20% discount), but because the store manager respects the book and the author, he insists on selling at the original price. (2) How can "One Punch" survive in a market with little living space and fierce competition? It's just giveaways! With a minimum consumption of 100 yuan, you can already get locally produced organic vegetables. Up to 300 yuan, you can exchange for craft beer or half a catty of shrimp noodles. Nowadays, the price of many books has exceeded 100 yuan, so as long as you buy a book, there are already organic vegetables for delivery (of course there are other options). This approach can not only attract readers, but also directly help local farmers and other tiny hand-made creators.

"Words are the food for the spiritual world, and agricultural products are the food for our bodies. We can't just care about one of them, why can't we care about both?" (3)

Third, the bookshelves are not classified according to the traditional classification of literature, history and philosophy, education, popular novels, etc., but rather concepts such as "Hong Kong has translations, see the words and breathe, strange people and strange things, and see the bottom line". The advantage of this is that readers can have a more comprehensive understanding of specific topics. For example, in the project of "Seeing Words and Breathing", there are not only chicken soup-style books for the soul, but also some books on psychology and meditation.

In this Hong Kong, which is slowly full of red lines and begins to be criminalized by words, publishing books can also be accused of "publishing seditious publications" (4), I believe that every independent bookstore will be in an environment of sincerity and fear. They are different from the three Chinese business chain bookstores blessed by the CCP. They provide a lot of free air outside through a tiny window, and provide books from different angles to understand the world. In particular, this "One Punch Bookstore" is not only a store selling books, but also provides a soil for the development of local culture.

Hopefully, this "one punch" can wake up Hong Kong.

In the end, I also bought three books, and "Photo. Photo. Phenomenology" from the bookstore.

Address: 3/F, Tai Nan Commercial Building, 169-171 Tai Nan Street, Sham Shui Po Business Hours: 1pm-9pm (Monday and Tuesday)/7:30pm (Wednesday to Sunday)
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bookpunch/
IG: www.instagram.com/bookpunch/

References

1 https://p-articles.com/one_take/1731.html
2 Ibid
3 https://www.inmediahk.net/node/1077499
4 https://theinitium.com/article/20220910-whatsnew-hongkong-sheep-village/