The quiet village of Honeoye Falls, about 500km from New York City and with a population of just 2,000, is a far cry from bustling, noisy and fast-paced Kowloon. But this is where lawyer-turned-bookseller Albert Wan relocated Bleak House Books a year after shuttering the once-beloved independent Hong Kong bookshop in August 2021.
Unsurprisingly, the shop has attracted lots of attention.
“When people think about small towns in the US … they’ve been hollowed out because jobs have gone elsewhere, people have moved away,” says Wan on a video call. “And so when you see a bookshop like ours, where it has nice lighting, there’s a ceiling mural, there’s very nice-looking bookshelves, something you would probably find in the city, but instead, it’s in this very small village – that’s really what surprises most people.”
The shop is a 1,800-square foot space with custom-designed bookshelves filled with new and used books. The ceiling mural depicts the layout of the original Bleak House Books in Kowloon. There’s also a section in the bookshop dedicated to publications about the city.
Non-fiction works, such as Antony Dapiran’s City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong about the 2019 protests, and The Troublemaker, a biography of Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai by Mark Clifford, sit alongside novels such as Owlish by Dorothy Tse and Lau Yee-wa’s Tongueless.
“We even have the memoir by Dr Yuen Kwok-yung,” says Wan proudly, referring to the microbiologist who advised the Hong Kong government on both the SARS and Covid-19 pandemics in 2003 and 2020-2023 respectively.
Because of the quiet location, Wan says business can be slow, and it reminds him of when he first started Bleak House Books on the 27th floor of an office building in San Po Kong in 2017. “It’s not unlike the old days,” he says with a laugh.
Wan is pleased to see some former customers from Hong Kong or those who have connections to the city make an effort to visit Honeoye Falls to say hello.
“It’s always good to meet those folks and to be reminded of where we are and why we’re here, even though some of the reasons for us being here are not exactly things you want to think about every day, but it does kind of motivate us in doing our work,” he says.
Upheaval and relocation
Wan and his family left Hong Kong in early 2022 following the 2019 protests, Covid-19 pandemic and implementation of the national security law. They chose to live in the Finger Lakes region of New York state for practical reasons: the many universities in the area means that healthcare is of a good standard and small-town real estate prices are more affordable.
After renting several homes they settled on Honeoye Falls, where their children go to school and Wan has a seven-minute commute by foot to the bookshop.
“It was a space that wasn’t being used for a while. The last real business to occupy it was a video rental store, so you can imagine how long it’s been since another sort of retail [was in that space],” explains Wan.
In Hong Kong Bleak House Books was known as a “yellow”, or pro-democratic, shop. Wan said that perception was inevitable.
“You can’t really sustain a business as a bookshop and not speak out about what was happening politically there: free speech and human rights and the silencing of dissent and all that stuff,” he says.
“If you don’t speak out about that as a bookshop, then it’s hard, even from a financial point of view; you’re not going to be able to thrive in a society that supports the kind of work that you do and so you’ll be out of a job.”
Since his departure from Hong Kong Wan notes that the crackdown on independent bookshops has continued; Hillway Culture closed in 2023 and Mount Zero followed last year.
“I did recently hear from someone who was a bookseller in Hong Kong, and I think he moved to the UK. I don’t know if he’s reopening a bookshop, but he does want to restart something, a venture related to books … it’s tough to start from scratch again, speaking from my own experience,” Wan says.
“I’m sure it must be harder for Hong Kongers who moved to the UK not having grown up there. I grew up in the States, so I’m pretty familiar with what it’s like here.
“Having money does help, because it minimises the risk, but there’s a lot to navigate when you’re in a new environment, different culture – you don’t have that same support network,” he adds.
While Wan is grateful that he could restart Bleak House Books, he says he mostly misses his friends and readers in Hong Kong.
“I would like to go back one day, but not anytime soon,” he says.
