By Madina Toure
Next year, Flushing’s Chung Hwa Bookstore will celebrate two decades in business as a pioneer in bringing a second source of Asian culture to the area.
The three-floor bookstore at 135-29 Roosevelt Ave. caters especially to the area’s Chinese and Taiwanese residents.
It stocks a variety of genres such as economics, business, health, cookbooks, dictionaries, anime, fiction and history as well as magazines on topics like fashion, cosmetics, business and economics.
They also sell test preparation books for examinations such as the SATs, the New York Regents, the GRE and the GMAT as well as Chinese painting and calligraphy materials.
“Some come just to read, some come just to buy,” said Peter Wang, the bookstore’s general manager, who has been working at the bookstore for 18 years. “They say here is much better than the Queens Library because we’ve got more choices, all kinds of books we carry.”
Nearly 20 years ago, Wang’s brother-in-law founded the bookstore because many immigrants in the area came from China and Taiwan, a demographic that was served by only one other bookstore owned by The World Journal at the time.
“More people come into Flushing,” Wang said. “That’s why we think maybe we need more books so we opened a second bookstore.”
The bookstore mostly imports books from agents in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China who ship the books, which are brand new. Roughly 80 percent of the books are Taiwanese.
At least 300 people — mostly Chinese and Taiwanese — come into the bookstore every day, Wang said. The store currently has 10 employees.
They also get a large number of tourists, who are typically surprised to see a bookstore like Chung Hwa in the United States. The most popular books are the business and health books.
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
