Peter Goff is much loved in the expat communities in Beijing, Chengdu and Suzhou. That's also true for the Bookworm bookshop/restaurant he runs in those three cities.
Charmed by a painting of Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor on the wall of his parents' sitting room in Dublin, Ireland, young Goff didn't know he would later be in charge of the place that gained China a spot in the Lonely Planet's list of world's greatest bookshops.
"The painting was my first connection with Hong Kong, as well as this part of the world," Goff said, "and it was beautiful: a full moon over the canoes, with junks sailing in the back."
He is talking quickly in the Beijing Bookworm, boxed in a building with notable pink walls outside, while inside red lanterns hang high from the ceiling and great music floats in the air. It's a library of thousands of English-language titles.
Hailed as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world by many international media, it has been a "home away from home" to many.
"Peter makes me not only feel welcomed, but also a part of the family," said Raquel Soto Sanchez, who works there part-time.
Goff's efforts not only include being hospitable to customers and partners, and being passionate about books, he has to "be innovative" as he's managing brick-and-mortar bookshops in the digital age.
"Bookshops used to rely on putting classic books and recent releases on the shelves, and they survived. Where we're trying to develop is through the community, where lots of events are organized," he said.
The community-based Bookworm has year-round programs, and an annual literary festival that just wrapped up on Sunday. Goff has also tried launching a magazine, plus holding a literary award and running a press.
"The Bookworm not only serves as a bookshop but a reliable resource and platform for sharing ideas, open discussions and debates for the international community," Georg Jensen wrote for the Lum Dim Sum blog.
This year's Bookworm Literary Festival featured 180 writers and thinkers from 30 countries in 300 events. In previous sessions, Peter Hessler, Benjamin Zephaniah, Howard Goldblatt as well as home authors Mo Yan, Yan Lianke and Bi Feiyu were festival speakers.
"Because it has been 10 years, people know what it's about, so they plan in advance," Goff said, adding that the embassies and international schools had already been talking about whom to invite next year.
In the past decade, Goff has witnessed China become "more accessible than ever before" and with an increasingly attractive publishing market. He said many of the writers from outside of China have arrived "with their own educational purposes".
Calling China "one of those major countries an international writer can't miss to visit", he advised writers to come in with open eyes and open ears, taking in as much as they can.
"You have to visit it, you have to see it, feel it, touch it, smell it yourself before you really claim to be a globalized writer," he said.
Meantime, he is amazed by the depth, variety and genre of contemporary Chinese writing.
"Chinese writers are very engaged in the society they're living in. They are engaging in wider discussions over the years with topics like environmental awareness, a sense of self, of belonging and of social justice," he added.
Goff was born in 1968 in Dublin into a family that "had no connection with China" besides that painting in the sitting room.
After graduation with a degree in journalism from Rathmines College in 1992, he worked for several newspapers that brought him to Africa and central Europe.
Willing to work in Hong Kong, he took a job there in 2000. At that time he "caught the China bug", and was "struck by how dynamic China was as it was going through a period of such frenetic change" he wrote in a column in China Daily in 2015.
