5. Tai Yip Chinese Art Book Centre

I listened to beautiful music being played in the store whilst selecting a new book and to my surprise they were playing one of Ken Davis's CDs. I have a large collection of Ken Davis's music at home but decided to purchase one more of his CDs from this delightful store.

I visited two branches of Tai Yip on a 2003 trip to H.K.: the store at the H.K. Museum of Art and the Shatin location at the H.K. Heritage Museum. Both were extremely positive experiences! I found the staffs at both stores very courteous, to myself as well as other customers (Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers). Furthermore, they went out of their way to find options on how I could best ship books and other merchandise back to the U.S. They were very careful on getting complete shipping details. (The three shipments arrived in good order.) At the Salisbury Road store, because the display was out of a certain surname for the "surname coffee mugs," the staff kindly telephoned another store. Those were brought over promptly and I picked them up the following afternoon. As a librarian, it was a thrill to find quality books in English and Chinese on various aspects of culture, art, and society. The sound recordings offerings at the Shatin locations were also very good.