Upon stepping inside the doors of Parenthèses bookstore in Hong Kong, you are greeted by a well-worn leather armchair.

Across the store’s thirty-two-year history, that arm-chair has hosted some of the great luminaries of French literature and culture in their visits to Hong Kong’s only French-language bookstore: the writers Michel Houellebecq, Pierre Assouline and and the Nobel Prize–winning Gao Xingjian, the cartoonist Guy Delisle, the photographer Bettina Rheims, the Oscar-winning actress Juliette Binoche and the Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire—all of them have been photographed sitting in this leather armchair. They are shown in photographs gracing the walls of the store, underneath a glowing sign spelling out the bookstore’s name in elegant cursive red neon, a quiet nod to the neon-lit street culture of Hong Kong.

• Tags: Hong Kong, Issue 29, Madeline Progin, Parenthèses