Feature: CHINESE NEW YEAR - Josh Loeb talks to The Charing Cross library's service manager Chichy Li
Published: 27 January, 2012
by JOSH LOEB
Ever since Chinese immigrants relocated from the East End to the fringes of Soho, where they found cheap rents after the war, the area has been home to the country’s most high-profile Chinese community.
Here you can find Chinese advice centres, travel agents, publishers, dumpling vendors, herbalists and one of the only public libraries in the UK with a dedicated Chinese section.
The Charing Cross Library in Charing Cross Road began stocking Chinese books in 1983 and now has many thousands.
“In the 1980s it was very small,” says its service manager Chichy Li, “just a couple of shelves of books and only one Chinese member of staff. After 1990 it began growing quickly. Now we stock fiction and non-fiction including books on the sciences, philosophy and biographies. We have a very broad collection.”
Ms Li, who was born near Beijing, has lived in the UK for 10 years and previously worked as a librarian in hospitals and universities.
As well as lending books, the library serves as a kind of community centre. It hosts exhibitions and book sales as well as Chinese storytelling events for children and book clubs for adults.
There is a monthly group where “small business advisers” can discuss self-help books such as Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – apparently a popular title in the Far East.
Ms Li, who writes a weekly book review column in a popular British Chinese newspaper, says that many novels that have done well in the UK have been translated into Chinese.
But the most successful books in China continue to be classics such as the works of Qing Dynasty writer Cao Xueqin, first published around 170 years ago.
“At this library we own 13 copies of Dream of the Red Chamber [Cao Xueqin’s most famous work] and it is still not enough,” says Ms Li. In China, translated editions of cosmologist Stephen Hawking’s books have been among the best-selling books by English writers, she added.
The Charing Cross Library operates a partnership system whereby other local authorities including Barnet and Tower Hamlets pay for a subscription which allows them to temporarily stock some titles on loan from the institution.
Ms Li said the library had become increasingly popular over the years as the type of Chinese people coming to England had changed from being labourers who were often poorly educated to high-flying professionals.