Recounting a chapter

At a time when China was not as open to the world as it is today, Chinese bookstores overseas were the only window to the country for scholars abroad. Wang Kaihao reports.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Guanghwa Company, a bookstore in London's Chinatown, received parcels twice a month from mail trains arriving at King's Cross Station.

The trains carried precious material for Sinologists in Britain, who had little access to China, says K.C. Tang, now in his 70s, as he recalls how he set up a Chinese bookstore in London.