Despite the Net, books are here to stay

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By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-16 07:42

Will the digital revolution mean that books go the way of pen and parchment?

Not likely, judging by the popularity of the Eighth Beijing Book Fair, which opened last Friday in Ditan Park, just across from the Yonghe Lama Temple. According to local TV, some 80,000 visitors thronged the fair on Saturday alone.

When my husband and I arrived at the park on Saturday afternoon, we saw many shoppers leaving with backpacks full of books. After paying five yuan to enter, we joined the crowds elbowing their way from one booth to another.

There was something for everyone. We saw people hauling boxes full of history books or encyclopedia. Parents with children in tow carried fairy tales and simplified versions of Chinese and international literature, as well as books on painting and handicrafts.

Of the reported 250,000 titles on offer, best sellers included The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power: 1653-2000 by John Steele Gordon, The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith, and Six Days that Shook the World by Roger Lowenstein.

Many titles were offered at a discount of 15 to 50 percent, but these bestsellers continued to sell at full price, an indication that the on-going financial crisis has caught the attention of readers in Beijing.

TV reports showed young fans queuing up for an autograph from novelist Guo Jingming. Though only in his early 20s, Guo may be the richest novelist in China. Nearby, a large group of middle-aged readers crowded around Yan Chongnian, whose analyses and stories about the Ming and Qing dynasties have won a large following in print and on TV.

Organizers expect several hundred thousand people to visit the fair before it ends on Monday.

Still, some lament that people no longer read books.

At a recent literary forum in Shanghai, most of the speakers were pessimistic about the future of novels.

Pan Kaixiong, publisher of the People's Literature Publishing House, the country's top literary press, was quoted as saying that half of the 1,200 novels the country's book companies publish "simply rolled off the presses and then were quickly dumped as garbage".

None of China's literature magazines has more than 5000 subscriptions. Of the top 200 titles in the first half of this year, only 20 were literary works.

Novelists who were well known a decade ago seem to have drowned in a sea of literature on the Internet. As of 2006, three of the best-known websites had carried 180,000 novels; the most popular drew nearly 130,000 hits.

Thanks to the Internet, anyone can become a writer. People are no longer content to wait for established writers to deliver literature to them; they want to create their own.

Clearly there is no shortage of readers. The problem, as some critics have pointed out, lies with the authors themselves. Established writers have lost touch with the public; they no longer touch the readers' hearts with their works.

Some writers themselves concede that they have lost ground. They need to search for new perspectives. As writer Ye Zhaoyan explained: "When I exchanged cell phone numbers with my friends, I had to take off my reading glasses in order to see the numbers clearly. I must see the numbers, but from a different angle."

From the popularity of this week's book fair, it is obvious that there is no lack of enthusiasm for books. Internet or not, the public is hungry for titles of every description. If established authors are not selling, they have no one to blame but themselves.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/16/2008 page8)