Specialist bookstores respond to expat tastes

Fang Suo Commune in Guangzhou provides a luxury reading and shopping experience.

Although brick-and-mortar booksellers in China are expanding their volume of books in foreign languages, some expatriates still have difficulty finding what they want on the shelves.

Non-English speakers can find only a few books in their mother tongues for sale, and they are expensive.

Michela Pacco, an Italian woman who has lived for a year in Guangzhou as an art institute PR person, relies on bringing books from Italy or asking her sister to ship the books she wants.

Yvan Schulz, a Swiss researcher who has been working in China on and off for three years on the subject of e-waste, seldom buys books in Guangzhou, where he and his wife live. He resorts to buying e-books online and bringing books from Switzerland.

"Most of the English books sold here in China are best-selling fiction, but I need professional books," Schulz said.

Being comfortable using Chinese, he tried to buy books on taobao.com, but was unable to as the popular shopping website requires customers to provide Chinese ID card numbers when they order and pay.

Schulz's wife, Cristina, has little Chinese and has been looking for a bookstore in the southern Chinese city where she can buy books in foreign languages and enrich her social life.

Cityweekend.com.cn, echinacities.com and gzstuff.com are some of the English websites that expatriates in Guangzhou browse most often in search for leisure activities. However, Cristina has found little to interest her on these sites.

"The information is mostly about going to bars, clubbing and partying. But I'm not a partygoer," she said. "A bookstore is important in my cultural life. I like reading and I hope to meet other foreigners with interests that relate to me at events the bookstore hosts."

"It would be great if anyone could make a guidebook to point me the way to bookstores suitable for foreigners," she adds.