The bookstores in Malaysia, especially around KL, are so to my taste. They have large collections both of English and Chinese publications. Especially Chinese publications, they are from China(mainland), HK Taiwan and even local Malaysian and Singaporean presses. It is very hard in mainland China to buy books published in HK or Taiwan, especially when the books are politics-related.
There was one bookstore in PJ (a district near KL), called Popular Book. (大众书店）It's kinda of interesting to realize there was no Bahasa Melayu on this website, only Chinese and English. The company was established in 1984 and now have some 60 store around Malaysia. Asian Weekly (亚洲周刊), a HK based international Chinese magazine, publishes weekly Chinese book bestseller lists from leading bookstores among Chinese speaking cities, among which Popular Book stands for whole Malaysian Chinese Literature.
Another bookstore I visited was Kinokuniya (纪伊国屋书店). It was a Japanese based global bookstore chain. It was located at Level 4, KLCC. It was such a big store that you couldn't even miss. Interestingly, the Chinese books are far more than the Japanese books in that store. Kinokuniya also operates a store in Sydney and said to be the biggest in Australia. Borders, a British bookstore chain, is also very popular in Malaysia. They also have large Chinese collections.
The books in Malaysia is very cheap, compared to Australia, who has stupid publication restrictions which are supposed to aim at protecting local publication industry. The Chinese publications are also reasonably priced, taken exchange rate factors into account.
CD
There I went to a lovely CD store in KLCC, in which you can first happily and later a little embarrassed ask the shop keeper to test the CD for you. You can pick up any of the CD and present to the shop keeper and they will unpack the CD and lead you to the CD player even though you don't want to buy it. So after listening to half a dozen of CD, I bought four local Malaysian albums which I supposed were nowhere else could be found in other countries.
I always remember in an Indonesian movie I have seen, there was a female singer in a bar at KL, her voice was so beautiful and I believe she was singing in Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Indonesia, which two were basically the same. So I requested several albums contained Bahasa Maleyu. I was amazed at the popularity of English songs, though. It seemed very hard to find an indie or acoustic album totally in Bahasa Maleyu.
Movies
Malaysia is definitely heaven for a movie bug like me. American, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian..... original soundtrack and English-Chinese double subtitle. The prices for student were so cheap (only about RM10 - CNY 20 or AUD 3.3) that I watched 4 movies in total during my stay in Malaysia.
I saw a local Malaysian film which was such a novel experience to me. It was about a poor street boy whose daily activity was racing motors with mates and delivery mails as a job. Then accidentally appointed to be temporary boyfriend of his beautiful rich boss, whom he secretly loved. The boss was from a rich family and her friends were all sort of upper class. After several up and downs the two fell in love and.... Well, personally, I don't think they will live happily ever after, which the movie tried its best to convince its audience. During most of my stay I interact with local Malaysian Chinese and barely spoke to Malay unless I have to. So the movie showed me a different view of Malaysia which really was a pleasure. An interesting phenomenon in this movie is that not a single woman wore a headscarf, which I though was a requirement of Melays.
No comments:
Post a Comment