Thanks for the welcomes!
cassidym and spirits: Also depends on what you're NOT reading (eg. textbooks, lecture notes, piles and piles of them) when you're reading ebooks
I have no idea! I looked into the Hanlin and other chinese readers while I was researching but it turned out that it would actually cost more to order one of those practically locally than to have a Sony shipped over from the US (why? no idea.)
My chinese is atrocious and I don't really do much Chinese reading at all (just newspapers, enough to get by) so it wasn't a concern for me.
I think the shelf space problem is definitely going to be much worse in HK, but then again I rarely see people reading for pleasure over here - too busy, too much work, too tired, etc. Might be a product of the hectic lifestyle or that people just weren't brought up to read for pleasure... (I was living in Australia at the age of 5, and that's when I learned to read and subsequently got hooked...)