Today is World Book Day and across China, a week-long celebration of reading has been taking place.
But more specifically in Nanjiang.
The 5th National Reading Conference has turned books into something more.
Experiences that blend history, poetry with cutting-edge technology.
With nearly 700 million digital readers in the country alone, the question is no longer whether people are reading, but how.
Coming to you live from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushan and Feifei.
First up.
April 23rd, that is today.
It marks World Book and Copyright Day.
It's an initiative that was first launched by UNESCO and, starting this year, China has expanded it into a full week-long national reading celebration.
And in Nanchang, that's in East China's Jiangxi province, reading has taken over the city.
The fifth national reading conference has turned books into experiences.
They're putting together history with poetry.
How beautiful.
And don't forget that cutting-edge technology as well.
We've been celebrating reading all week here on Roundtable, and today is no different, but we're doing it a little bit different today.
We're going to get to our author a little bit later in the show, but we're going to start with what I mentioned already the Fifth National Reading Conference and we'll find out what that's all about.
Yishun and Fei-Fei, good afternoon to you.
Hello, Steve.
So earlier this week actually, the fifth National Conference on Reading kicked off, as you mentioned, in Nanchang, which is a very interesting choice considering, you know, when it comes to Nanchang, it has a lot of landmarks in traditional Chinese culture and which I'll cover that a little bit later in the show.
But at that event there are a number of events and participants basically highlighting that reading should lie at the heart of cultural growth.
And when it comes to how exactly are we going to achieve that?
That means people participants in events and forums are calling for stronger efforts nationwide to make reading a bigger part of everyday life, from improving public reading spaces to creating a more vibrant book-loving culture across the society.
And also for this week, we are having the National Reading Week And we have a number of activities throughout the country, including here in Beijing, that basically are trying to invite people to read more and, you know, open up their pages.
Yuxin, you stumbled across a book fair, did you not?
Here in Beijing yeah, of course.
Um, that was in chaoyang parking, eastern part of beijing.
And then wow, we accidentally get into that book fair and it was surprisingly large and a lot of these bookstores were selling books with a lot of discounts, because i think the city were giving incentives or subsidies to the citizens so that you can scan a QR code and get, I think, 40 off when you're buying books.
Yeah, so I think it is such a great opportunity for book lovers to get some purchase.
Yeah, that's cool, and it was an outdoor event too.
Yeah exactly, it gets a little bit warm, but i think um, when you're excited in that book fair it's, it's nothing, that's awesome.
What about, um the city itself, nanchang?
I don't know too much about it.
I apologize for that.
Is that a place that's kind of known for its books or reading or education?
Or I'm just wondering if there's any connection to the city and the conference.
I think it makes sense that Nanchang is the city that hosts this conference.
And we know that Jiangxi province is a place with a lot of ancient history, with poem and poets, and also I think some of the places there in Jiangxi was really beautiful in the way that they have a very traditional Chinese architectural style.
And there is a place, I think, called Wu Yuan.
And you can visit there.
We saw the picture there and it looks like a fairyland because the the architecture was built along on the hill and you can walk along that kind of under the roof and go into that area.
It has mountain, it has water, it has that greenery things and everything just so like fairy land.
It looks like something you might read about in a book, which makes it perfect.
All right, let's get back to the conference.
So april 20th to 26 well, that was the reading week.
Um, that's the same schedule though, for the conference, and they had a bunch of different uh forums being held there.
They are being held there, and they're targeting different fields and different audiences too.
Yeah, because when we're talking about reading, when it comes to different ages, people have different demands and also right now because of technology, we have different platforms and different ways For reading.
So these forums, for example, they can focus on youth reading or they can focus on family reading.
And also when it comes to spaces, there are reading in libraries, reading in rural places.
And also there are when it comes to the legal side of reading, when you're talking about the rights. protection for readers and also writers and also digital reading is a major part when it comes to these years conference especially when it comes to the technology of AI and how that's been helping people to get more immersive experiences in reading.
For example, a new initiative that is bringing primary and secondary schools to create reader reading environments for students.
In particular, they have a reading AI reading companion called Yu Xiaoyue.
That's designed to blend the digital and traditional reading together.
So, for example, when it comes to a student reading a historical facts in a book, but it would be very difficult for him or her to understand exactly what happened, especially when it comes to historical figures.
And that's when these AI reading companions come in to help to, for example, recreate what could happen in the past, to help students better understand what's in the text.
And also vice versa.
When it comes to teachers.
These companions can help teachers to design a curriculum or class contents to tell the students.
So the AI can help you talk to historical figures, I suppose.
And it's just kind of getting the students involved. in a different way.
It's not easy sometimes for a person of any age to read something that's history heavy.
So especially for kids, right, it can get a little bit dry.
So making it a little bit more interactive, a little bit more fun, is a way to get them involved more.
Exactly.
When we're talking about like digital helps and technology helps reading.
Initially I was thinking about just audio books and people will read on their smartphones and everything like e-books.
And the thing is that we are having so many more of these campaigns that not only letting people to read using digital devices, but also using these forms to make people more engaged in the activity of reading.
And these kind of campaigns, not only um, engaging in historical figures and you can talk to some of these historical figures, and the animated version of these figures can be just there and you can talk to them and the ai actually help this kind of thing to become reality.
I think that is how fascinating it could be when we It was one of the forums, I think, where participants could scan a QR code with their phone and then talk with a digital persona across time, across different decades or across different centuries.
And that's part of a major cultural digitization project.
Which is kind of an exciting development in the world of reading.
All right, so let's talk about China itself and the achievements that the country has made to build a book-loving society.
What have we done here to make everybody want to read more?
Well, I think we talked about that on Roundtable before, actually that first of all, we are expanding a World Book Day into a whole week long celebration surrounding reading.
And when.
For example, this week, from April 20th to 26th this year, And more to that, taking advantage of these kind of time, a lot of cities, not only including Nanchang, but also, for example, here in Beijing, as Yusheng mentioned, a lot of book fairs are taking places.
And when it comes to book fairs, It's more than just purchasing books.
It's more than just about publishing houses, setting up a stall and selling books on a discount.
It's more about getting different experiences and activities so that people can have the opportunity to sit down and actually open up a book.
For example, I read that here in Beijing, there is a park.
They offered an activity called reading together on the lawn.
So they have a dedicated space. where reader can just relax under tents and start reading.
And they pose a challenge to readers.
It means called put down your phones and start reading.
So for any reader who managed to read for more than an hour without using their phones, they can take home a book with no cost.
Oh, for free.
For free.
If you can keep on reading for one hour without using a lot of your phone, you know, checking on Instagram and so on and so forth.
Yeah, checking your messages.
Yeah, so it's kind of a challenge.
Well, on some level, I think it's ironic thinking about how many people can actually, at home, sit back for one hour without checking their phone and just enjoy reading.
So I think he's also sort of a reminder for people out there that you know remember there is another world in your books that can be in your imaginary world, that you can take on.
I agree.
If you're looking for an escape, don't look to social media.
Look to the story that exists within those pages.
Yuxin, you said that you stumbled across the book fair at Chaoyang Park on the eastern side of Beijing, but that's not the only book fair happening here in the capital.
There are more.
And it makes sense actually, because there are 2000-plus bookstores that are participating at a number of different venues here.
And these events are not wrapping up anytime soon.
They're going to run through to the middle of May, up until the 17th.
Chaoyang Park is one.
Wetland Park is another.
Shaogang Industrial Heritage Park, Old Summer Palace.
All of those places are offering readers an engaging and an interactive environment in which to immerse themselves into books, which is great.
And what else is great is that we've seen more readers.
We've seen the number of readers on the rise, particularly when it comes to e-reading.
I don't know.
I'm kind of a purist when it comes to that.
I was an English major.
So you prefer paperback?
Well, it's just what I grew up with, so I'm kind of biased, I suppose.
But it does make sense because it is the more convenient way, I suppose, to acquire our books these days.
But yeah, a big jump in the number of e-readers here.
Yeah.
Actually, this is, I think, one of the biggest trends in reading digital reading and 808 of Chinese adult citizens reported engaging in digital reading in 2025.
And I think I am one of them.
By the end of 2025, China's digital reading user base had reached 689 million, that's up to around 3 from the previous year, while the total number of digital reading works exceeded 70 million.
And still, a growing number of people turned to audiobooks and video book reviews, with the figures rising from 39.
And 5.7% in 2024 to around like a little bit more than that.
And also 6.3% in 2025 respectively.
So China has a mass digital reading market and nearly doubled over the past five years.
And I think.
Of course, when we are using these kind of digital versions of books, it feels differently.
But the thing is that, to me, I think it helps me to read more books.
Because I have a habit of if I'm reading a book, no matter if it's a physical book or a digital book if I need to read them, I need to go really, really slow, word by word.
But with an audiobook, they create a whole environment for you.
They even have background music.
They set up some sound effect for you.
And it's a more...
I think, lively way of reading books or just listening to a book.
We talked about too one day on the show about the goggles that you can put on.
That kind of gives you the sound effects of what you're reading.
If the book has you in a park at the time with birds, then you'll hear the chirping of the birds.
I don't know.
I mean it's cool and stuff, but I prefer the romantic, poetically romantic aspect of paperback books where yeah, you use your imagination to create those things.
Um, and there's something else that you get from paperback books too.
Recently, when I was on a vacation um, We were near the beach and the hotel had a swimming pool and there was a man reading a John Grisham book.
Now, John Grisham is the guy that I read.
He's one of my favorite authors when I go on vacation.
I'm not sure if you're familiar.
He's a lawyer from America and he writes all these legal novels.
Oh.
These kind of murder mysteries or courtroom dramas or stuff like that.
So I swam over to the guy.
He wasn't looking at me.
Swam over?
Yeah, yeah, because he was laying down next to the pool.
And he just had his book up in his face, right?
And I swam over and I said, excuse me, sir, is that the latest John Grisham novel?
And he said, I don't know if it's the latest.
My wife bought it for me.
Are you a Grisham fan?
And I said, Oh, yeah, actually, I am whenever I go on vacation, not every time.
But you know, I usually if I buy a book, it's going to be a John Grisham book.
He said, oh, that's cool.
Tell you what, I'm about three quarters of the way through this book.
Let me finish it if I can.
How long are you here for?
Blah, blah, blah.
And if I can finish it, I'll just give it to you.
So he finished it the next day.
He found me in the restaurant and he said, here you go.
So I said, OK, let's do this.
You sign it for me, sign the cover inside the cover and then put a date on it.
And then when I finish it, I'll bring it on vacation with me and I'll pass it on to somebody else.
And we'll create this like John Grisham novel around the world type thing.
He was from New Zealand and then I'm from Canada.
So we'll see how far it goes and we'll leave contact information for each step of the journey.
That's something that an e-book can never do for you.
That's true.
I remember I think there used to be a sort of online activity.
Very similar to this as well is that if I finished one book especially when it comes to novels I probably won't reread it in a short period of time.
I can just leave it anywhere in the city.
And I posted online that... try find this book yourself.
And if you like it, you can read it and then pass on to the next stranger in the city.
That's the poetically romantic part of paperback books that I was talking about.
You wouldn't leave your iPad somewhere.
It's hard to say.
And say, here, come pick this up.
I just couldn't get an argument.
But I understand that kind of romantic sense.
And that kind of um rent resonance that you can get between book lovers or maybe um the fan of the author.
It is the connection that you can get, even in another country, that you have no idea where that is or who that is.
So yeah, that kind of feeling just um you, you cannot replace it with a digital one.
Yeah, but when it comes to digital ones, I think I also have friend who keeps on reading.
There are like online reading platforms where they have a lot of a big collection of books.
And I think a lot of friends would just share a link to me.
Like this book is really, really fun.
Just finish reading it on a subway commute.
And I recommend it to you and you can read it when you are on a commuting daily, you know, on and off to work.
And I think it's kind of similar to what we did with the physical paperback book as well.
But I think it's more about building a community by reading is also something very interesting.
Yeah, and that's when it doesn't matter whether it's e-reading or paperback books.
It doesn't matter at all as long as more people are reading, and that's happening here in China between 2012 and 2024.
Over that 12-year span the overall reading rate among adult citizens here in the country rose really steadily from over 76 to over 82.
That's from Xinhua News.
So it's good to hear that more people are reading.
More people are reading e-books, more people are reading paperback books.
They're just reading more in general.
So what can we do then, with that in mind, to kind of facilitate that, this reading-friendly society that we seem to have here in China?
First of all, building a kind of strong national reading culture, especially among young people, comes down to one key idea making reading a natural, enjoyable and accessible part of everyday life, not a kind of task.
And I think...
That's why the infrastructure in China in recent years has been a big part in this.
And as public libraries play a very crucial role in building of a book loving society.
China now has over 3200 public libraries at the county level and above, along with nearly 68000 library branches and service points.
And I think that makes sense to me.
I think we talked about it before.
We can search for libraries near us.
And the thing is that when you visit some parks, maybe you can even spot some vending machines that you can get a book to read, or that's a machine that you can borrow books from.
So yeah, these kinds of facilities.
I think it is not only Giving people convenience of reading books, but also create a whole atmosphere of making people think that reading book is an enjoyable thing.
I agree with that.
Well, all week long because it has been, and is and still is National Reading Week Roundtable has been joined by five prominent Chinese writers to share a book that matters to them, whether it's something that they've written themselves or a work that's deeply inspired them.
This segment is brought to you in collaboration with Apple Podcasts, and don't forget that we love to hear from you.
So on this week...
We'd like to know, what's a book that you've been enjoying recently?
Maybe you can recommend one to us.
You can share your picks and explore more from Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts, of course, but you can also contact us at roundtablepodcast at qqcom.
Well, with the support of the International Liaison Department of the China Writers Association, the series that we've been conducting all week.
It brings together voices and stories from across different cultures.
So with that, let's hear about today's writer and their book recommendations.
Today we invite Chinese writer Lu Min.
She was born in the 1970s, actually, in East China's Jiangsu Province.
She's a contemporary Chinese author and she writes a number of novels that's been translated to German French English Japanese, Russian and, I think, in total 20 different languages.
So you may find some of her works, for example The Golden River, or Fly Away to the Moon, or Steering Wheel, or This Love Could Not Be Delivered.
And this is the book she decided to recommend to us, Dinner for Six.
And let's take a listen, first of all, to why she decided to recommend dinner for sex to us.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Lu Ming.
I come from northern Jiangsu province.
I left my home village at the age of 14 to study at a postal and telecommunications vocational school in Nanjing.
At 18, I began working.
Over the years I've worked as a sales clerk, a statistician, an industry reporter, a company clerk and a secretary.
I remember one day standing on the 17th floor of my office building, looking out the window.
I saw countless heads moving along the streets below, and it seemed to me that the shadows beneath their feet were dragging along their heavy worries or hidden dreams.
At that moment, I felt an overwhelming urge.
I wanted to find a rope that could lead me into their inner worlds.
And so, from an afternoon when I was 25, Alongside all kinds of office documents on my computer, I quietly began writing fiction.
Up to today.
I've been writing for 28 years, publishing more than 30 books which have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
The book I'm sharing today, Dinner for Six, has been translated into eight languages, including English German Italian, Swedish and Turkish.
Although Dinner for Six is a work of fiction, it draws on the life experiences of our generation.
From youth to middle age, our lives have been closely tied to our country's reform and opening up and its economic development, especially around the 1990s.
The entire nation was undergoing industrial transformation, with heavy industry and manufacturing gradually giving way to the service and commercial sectors.
At that time, I happened to live in a large factory compound where I witnessed firsthand how people's lives were reshaped.
Some lost their jobs, some started businesses, some rose and others fell.
This became the narrative backdrop of Dinner for Six.
The novel centers on two single-parent families.
A father and a mother, each with their own child, come together to form a new family.
They are like six shattered pieces of glass, trying to come close to one another, yet colliding in the process, seeking love and understanding through hurt.
To stay as close as possible to my characters, I adopted six different perspectives, taking turns to tell their stories of life and death, separation and reunion, depicting a journey filled with both sorrow and warmth, yet sustained by mutual support.
As the book has been translated into different languages and traveled to international book fairs around the world, I've received a great deal of feedback from readers and attention from the media.
The Swedish edition of Dinner for Six won the Swedish Ministry of Culture's Fiction for Adults Award in 2020.
In Serbia.
Readers even urged my translator to publish more of my work, leading to the publication of two additional books there.
In countries like Hungary and Mexico, teachers and students have organized reading discussions around Dinner for Six in bookstores and universities.
I'm very happy that the six faces in this book have received so much attention and resonance.
It makes me think, although the story is set in China, it's also about everyone.
It portrays the 1990s, but it also seems to reflect the present and even the future, because people around the world continue to face the tides of economic change.
With industrial shifts come all kinds of circumstances.
People may be suddenly propelled far away like arrows, or experience the ups and downs of fate like kites.
And yet they may also be like seeds, resilient and tenacious, searching for new soil and water in which to take root and grow.
That's all for my sharing today.
I sincerely hope you'll join me in reading Dinner for Six.
It's a Chinese-style dinner and also a literary one.
And so Dinner for Six also was adopted to a movie called Youth Dinner in 2017.
But in Chinese, I think the names are the same, also 六人晚餐.
And I've never actually read this novel myself, but got me really, really curious because I think the 1990s you know, the time when China opened up to the world, the Chinese market opened up to the world is a very, I think, interesting time when, as Lu Min mentioned, a lot of people just basically have their life turned upside down.
And you can imagine, some went to a better place and some didn't really end up so well, and they kept, kept struggled.
And so that's why the stories happening in these historical backdrop can be very complicated.
And also when it comes to literature.
That means very enjoyable, maybe reading experiences for readers.
And I think because of her experience she mentioned that she has been in so many different industries, right?
She's been as a clerk, secretary or corporate planner, journalist, civil servant.
So she has that kind of experience and this kind of immersion in maybe bureaucratic and also service-oriented environments.
I think these things endowed her with a very sharp and insider's eye for the constraints and absurdities of these modern Chinese society's phenomenon.
So I think it can give readers a very authentic feeling of what happened during that time.
And I think that is why I think it attracted Fei Fei to have an interest to read that.
And Yeah, resonate with people here in China obviously, who went through that particular period of time, but resonate with people around the world, because even if those people are not Chinese for example, the fans in Sweden or the fans in Serbia you can still resonate on a human level about periods of difficulty and periods of perseverance too, which is what makes a story um so great and so accessible for anyone around the world, no matter where you are.
What an amazing story she has, huh?
She's sitting at her computer at 25 years old in the office tapping away at a worldwide success that she probably didn't even realize she was writing at the time.
Yeah, and also imagine the different jobs, the perspectives she get from all the changes she went through as her herself throughout life, and that's why i think a lot of her works basically focused on this quote-unquote little people's perspective left by the social changes, Even though maybe a lot of stories are set back in, for example, in the 1990s or 70s or before that.
But when it comes to today, we're also seeing a lot of social changes, a lot of different transformations when it comes to industries and economies.
And so to have this microscopic view of how everyday people are dealing with this kind of change is always fascinating to read and to think about really.
Lu Min's Dinner for Six.
If you haven't read it yet, put it on your list of things to do.
It sounds like it's amazing.
This segment was brought to you in collaboration with Apple Podcasts.
Share your picks with us, roundtablepodcasts.qq.com, and explore more from Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
