Singapore Shelf

Union Book Co goes down memory lane in its 70th year

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Among Chinese-literate Singaporeans of a certain vintage, the name Union Book Co - You Lian Shu Ju in Chinese - will ring a bell.

The Bras Basah Complex bookstore has been a fixture of the Chinese literary scene since the 1950s. Once Singapore's main importer of books from Taiwan, it now stocks more than 30,000 titles from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

It can also be found on 10 online platforms - Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, WeChat, Bilibili and more - and live-streams storytelling sessions and other events.

The pandemic sped up its efforts to go digital, says managing director Margaret Ma, 55, in Mandarin. "What's different from the past is you can't expect readers to just come to the store. You need to promote yourself, tell people about these good books and find ways to bring content to them."

This year, Union Book Co celebrates its 70th year in Singapore. To mark the occasion, it has issued a 99-page Chinese-language publication looking back on its history.

The story began in 1949, when a group of young intellectuals left China for Hong Kong and later started a publishing organisation grounded in the ideals of democracy, economic equality and a free society. Three years later, they set up an office in Singapore at the now-demolished Winchester House in Collyer Quay.

This was followed by a store at 469 North Bridge Road in 1956 - the year Nanyang University (or Nantah) held its first classes - selling books as well as its own publications such as Chao Foon and Student Weekly.

Over the years, it went through several incarnations, from a three-storey space at 303 North Bridge Road in 1968 to its current shop, which opened in 1981.

The late Mr Chow Li Liang, who ran Union Book Co from 1977 before handing it over to Ms Ma in 2005, bought over all the shares for Union Book Co, so the Singapore store was fully independent of its parent firm.

In 1995, the store started to sell more books in simplified Chinese characters, and such titles now make up 60 per cent of its stock. It also owns its units on the third floor of Bras Basah Complex.

While most of its customers are middle-aged or elderly, Ms Ma is eyeing the younger crowd. "There is demand from parents who want to get books for their children, be it in the form of graded readers or picture books. We try to make things more lively, to attract more people and nurture the next generation."

The company's 18 full-time staff - their ages range from 25 to 57 - are mostly from Malaysia. Ms Ma, who joined in 1995, is a Chinese immigrant turned Singaporean.

She quotes a Chinese proverb: "Ren sheng qi shi gu lai xi" ("one seldom lives to be 70").

"How do you keep this bookstore going for 100 years? That can't depend solely on me," says Ms Ma, who has already found a successor among the team.

When The Sunday Times visited the shop a fortnight ago, customer Y.T. Chua, 70, had just bought a book on yoga. He has been visiting the store since he was a student, he says in Mandarin. "I like literary books. I can find more of those here, which I can't get from the other stores. Taiwanese books are still better than the ones from mainland China."

Nantah's closing in 1980 dealt a big blow to the Chinese literary community. But there is still a market for Chinese books here, Ms Ma says.

"People always say the standards of Chinese are falling and falling, but look - a Chinese bookstore has survived for so long."

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Singapore’s English literary journal releases box set

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Singapore's oldest existing English-language literary journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), has been online-only since it was founded in 2001.

Two decades and some 1,700 pieces later, it is releasing its first physical box set, which gathers 100 past contributions from Singaporean and international writers.

Quiet Loving, Ravaging Search - 20 Years Of Quarterly Literary Review Singapore consists of four books, each based on a theme beginning with the letter Q, L, R or S.

The works were curated and edited by the journal's current editors - founder Toh Hsien Min, Yeow Kai Chai, Yong Shu Hoong and Stephanie Ye.

The box set, which also contains fresh material, is published by Dakota Books, a new literary imprint under veteran publisher Fong Hoe Fang's Word Image publishing house.

Mr Fong, founder of Ethos Books, approached the QLRS team with the idea early last year, feeling it was important to do something to mark the 20-year milestone.

Toh, 47, a poet with a day job in risk management, started QLRS in his 20s - a year after returning from Oxford University, where he studied English. Singapore, unlike Britain, did not have much of a journal scene at the time.

"It feels like national service, in a lot of ways," he says. "If I had the benefit of foresight 21 years ago to figure that, in 2022, I'd still be doing this, I might have gone, hmm, maybe not."

QLRS is volunteer-run. It has no advertisements, does not receive National Arts Council funding and can pay its contributors only in coffee. Over the years, it has had 80 issues across sections such as poetry, short stories, essays and criticism. Writers such as Singaporean novelist Sharlene Teo and Hong Kong poet Mary Jean Chan were published there before they became more well-known.

While QLRS attracts a healthy number of submissions for creative writing, its literary criticism section has enjoyed less traction.

"It's maybe my biggest disappointment about the site," Toh says. "I would have liked to have an active culture of not just producing books, but thinking about them and having the courage and honesty to call them out if they are not good enough."

The small literary scene might have something to do with this.

"If you say so-and-so's book was terrible, you'll probably run into him or her two weeks later at some literary event.

"In contrast, in the British scene, you could be a critic in Manchester taking on someone from London, and you'd never see the person again. Perhaps that gets in the way of honesty a little bit."

QLRS owes its longevity partly to the fact that it is a Web publication.

"If we had to print, distribute, keep stockpiles of old issues, I think we would have closed down 15 years ago," says Toh.

He says of the box set: "It's nice to have this somewhere in the physical world, even if all of our electronic infrastructure disappears."

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Famzines in a book

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For nearly 10 years, the Lim family - married couple Pann, 49, and Claire, 48; and their son Renn, 18, and daughter Aira, 15 - have been making zines together.

"We love design - that's our medium," says Claire, a graphic designer-turned-housewife. "Another family could be doing sports or cooking together. It's actually just about spending time together."

In 2011, they started a family art collective, Holycrap - "crap" is an acronym of their names - under which they exhibited art and later launched Rubbish Famzine, a family magazine of 10 issues ranging from The Unfinished Chronicle Of The Chair Ballad, about their fascination with chairs; to An Emojious Odyssey Of The Gluttonous Omnivores, which explores their love of food.

To celebrate 10 years of Holycrap, the Lims have released a book, Blood, Sweat And Tears (above), which gathers a decade's worth of paintings, pictures and words from their zines and other projects.

It comes with a cassette recording of a song they wrote together and is housed in a tissue box.

Claire says: "The kids might think the family project is no big deal or might not understand the full impact of it, but we wanted to do this as a memento for when we are gone."

Holycrap has earned nods from global awards such as the British D&AD Pencil. Last month, Blood, Sweat And Tears won two "graphite pencil" awards for graphic and packaging design.

The Lims started the collective because Renn, then in primary school, loved to draw. They had a no-iPad rule during mealtimes, so when they visited restaurants, they would take along colour pencils and paper for him to doodle with and, over time, collected hundreds of his scribbles.

Starting a family art group was also a way for Pann, a co-founder of creative agency Kinetic Singapore, to spend more time with his children.

"I came home one night and told Claire, I spend so much time at work talking to students - why are we not doing some of this teaching for our own kids?"

During a two-week family trip to Japan in 2013, the family shot 103 rolls of film. This gave rise to Rubbish Famzine's first issue, Google Translating Tokyoto.

It takes six to eight months to produce one zine. Pann does the designing while Claire oversees the text, and Renn and Aira contribute words and illustrations.

The labour of love has involved plenty of sweat and tears - and a bit of blood, if you count the penknife cut Pann suffered some time around Issue 3.

These days, Renn and Aira work on the zine whenever they like, so long as they meet the deadlines.

Claire says: "When the kids were young, they would follow everything we said. When they hit their teens, because they spent a lot of time doing stuff with us, they missed out on outings with friends. We had to be sensitive to their concerns as well."

Work on Issue 11 has already begun, even as Aira prepares for her O levels and Renn pursues sports and exercise science in polytechnic.

Pann says the mission of Rubbish Famzine remains unchanged. "We just did it for ourselves - that was the starting point. We'll never be afraid to put out stuff that we think is 'us'."