Cultivating Space: A dialogue with Berlin's encounters bookspace

​Speaker: Mary Lee(encounters bookspace, Berlin)

​Moderator: Lala H (Unbound Bookstore, SF)

​About the Event: Join Mary and Lala for a candid conversation on the motivations, logistics, and everyday realities of building and running independent cultural spaces in foreign contexts.

The conversation will be in English, or a mix of English and Mandarin.

encounters is a project conceived by writer and arts practitioner Mary Lee in 2023 as a response to her being a Hong Konger in Berlin living a kind of lost in translation existence. Begun as a small bookshop project featuring selected publications from a number of independent publishers and self-publishing initiatives from Hong Kong and the surrounding region, mostly in Chinese but also in other languages, on contemporary East Asian perspectives and experiences, covering a wide range of subjects including history, literature, art and culture, encounters was first hosted by bóbó books, a Hamburg-based Chinese bookshop. In the summer of 2024, a monthly pop-up bookstore took place at Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin. More than a bookshop, encounters also organises events and happenings with different collaborators, in the spirit of bringing forth encounters and conversations in various forms.

The encounters bookspace (Prinzenallee 60, 13359 Berlin) was officially opened on 22 August 2025. The space is shared and jointly run by three East-Asian projects: encounters bookspace, Impression Taiwan, and Deerland Tea (until August 2026), the venue is supported by SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA by bi'bak. The bookspace is open 2 afternoons a week, in addition to irregular happenings initiated by encounters and/or our collaborators, including book talks, film screenings, music concerts, workshops and cultural gatherings.