general

China reading statistics

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Books still count but web content is on the rise

See here details of a recent survey (2018) providing insights on China reading statistics.

  • Adults read just under eight books on average last year, including some 3.3 digital books.
  • Readers 17 years or younger logged almost nine books apart from textbooks, a slight increase from 2017.
  • Youths 14 to 17 years old read an average of 11.5 books outside of classwork.
  • The amount of reading is not as large as in countries with strong reading habits, like Germany, France, Russia and Japan.
  • The survey found that 80.8 percent of adults have a reading habit, covering all kinds of material, in print, digital or online, an annual increase of 0.5 percentage points compared with 2017.
  • A decade ago, it was 69.7%, and 20 years ago, it was 60.4%.
  • The growth in digital reading, while demand for printed books remains stable. Mobile phones have become Chinese people’s favorite medium for reading and obtaining information.
  • Online, they read news, watch short videos and participate in social media.
  • Adults spent an average of almost 85 minutes a day on their phones, four more minutes than in 2017.
  • There is a sharp rise in audio books, with almost a third of the population having the habit of listening to audio books. This would mean about 350 million people.

Libraries

There is one library for about 400,000 Chinese nationals on average, in contrast with 2,500 people in the United States and hundreds of people in many European countries.

I see an increase of libraries in general. The government-sponsored ones are more “serious” while many of the private sector venues are often used to surf the internet, for fun or for work.

There seems to be little tradition in China to view libraries as a venue for a family visit, for parents to take their children along to explore books and other media.

As for the book shops, the choice may look large but there are very few foreign books. Getting a foreign title into a book shop is very difficult as the books are supposed to be imported through authorized channels only and subject to scrutiny (= censorship). Obviously many Chinese books are not available due to some …. euh special reasons.

My books are on sale in the Sanlitun Bookwork but that is a rare exception.

What about newspapers

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

The little brothers of books: newspapers in print.

I mentioned a lot about books, but what about newspapers?
I have been a dedicated reader for decades of what was the International Herald Tribune, then later called The New York Times International Edition. Unfortunately, while the print arrives in my Beijing home in a sealed envelope, sometimes copies are censured of simply not delivered because of “bad content”. All while one has to submit also copy of the passport; not suitable for local Chinese. Worse, cost went up every year and one year subscription became RMB 9,300. Yes, that’s OVER US$9,300!!! So, I gave up and took a digital subscription. I am slowly getting used to it but I still miss my beloved newspaper. Now left is only China Daily, the newspaper without real news, so censured it has become.

New York TimesSee the last copy I received.
I also kept some of the historical different prints from IHT and NYT, when they started color or different designs. I also have an original copy of the first ever China Daily!

Which is the best newspaper?

I tried several newspapers. The Wall Street Journal Asia is pretty OK but by far I have always preferred the “IHT”. Reason: in-depth coverage and a very wide range of articles, from U.S. politics to China issues, over arts, health, name it.

I still have this “poster” hanging in my office of THINK. Many people should read more papers like this, it would ‘MAKE AMERICA THINK AGAIN”. Oh well, wishful thinking…

NYT stops its political cartoons

Well, that is what I call short-sighted and stupid. I loved many of those. Anyway they were not available in the digital online version. Well we still have the China Daily cartoon, obviously not always that memorable. Except like this one of 19 December 2016 where it predicted the current trade war…

See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/06/11/new-york-times-cuts-all-political-cartoons-cartoonists-are-not-happy/

and

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/business/international-new-york-times-political-cartoons.html

I love cartoons

I also miss in the NYT digital version the other cartoons like Peanuts. I still have some in China Daily. Funny enough I found out that the same cartoon published in a different newspaper… is not 100% the same.

Peanuts cartoon

As we would say “spot the differences!”

Books are alive

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Not the end of print

Contrary to the prediction of many, books are alive, in print.
The year 2018 has been, much to everyone’s surprise, a blockbuster for the publishing industry. Despite the relentless bad news, readers have bought books in droves. Hardcover sales are up, and unit sales at independent bookstores have risen 5%.
But what should be good news for publishers, agents and authors has created headaches during the crucial holiday sales season, as printing presses struggle to keep up with a surge in demand, creating a backlog that has led to stock shortages of popular titles.
The biggest cause of the bottleneck, publishers and agents say, is consolidation and collapse among printing companies.
The printing industry has its own problems, including paper shortages and price increases. And the low unemployment rate has made it harder for printers to hire additional workers.
Surprisingly, some of the current chaos has come about because the publishing industry is not only stable but seems to be thriving. After years of declining print sales, hardcover and paperback editions have been rising recently, while e-book sales have fallen.

The full story

Read the full story here:
23 December 2018 – Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales
The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/books/paper-printers-holiday-sales-books-publishers.html

Alive and thriving, illustrated by cartoons

 

Some consider book readers to be “suspicious” people, as per a French cartoon (“I am worried, he has bad friends… they all read books.”)
And a double-meaning cartoon in French gives the correct message: “This is one of the big pleasures in life… Read a book!” (If you see something else, please consult a psychologist!)
Reading a book is indeed taking a bath in culture and dreaming.
Obviously there are countries where bookshops are closing in favor of more sinister outlets…
And some of the young might be clueless looking at a “book” (with no batteries).

Chinese are reading books

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

A changing landscape

Chinese are reading books, yes, but while print is far from dead, digital is making a constant progress.
Here some book market data from 2017 when the changing habits became clear.

Chinese adults read an average of just under eight books in 2016 – a tiny increase of 0.02% over 2015 – while a rapid increase of 6.1% was seen in the number of people reading digital content. In 2016, an adult Chinese read paper books for an average of about 20 minutes. They read up to about 74 minutes on mobile devices, 3.7 times higher than paper book-reading time.
Of the nearly eight books read by an average adult in 2016, about five were in print form and three were digital. Wei said similar surveys of readers from European countries and the United States show that they read 10 titles a year, while Japanese read 12.
The survey also found that more than 17% of Chinese used audio books last year, a fairly new trend. Romance, history, languages and lectures were the favored audio content. My (Chinese) wife listen the whole day to Chinese audio books, she says it is easy and relaxing.
And despite the slight increase in the number of books read on average, it is a worrying trend that more and more Chinese adults engage in casual and superficial reading.

For the question, “Where’d all the time go?” President Xi Jinping has a simple answer: Make time outside of work to study. When he worked in rural Shaanxi province, he walked 15 kilometers to borrow a book, he would read while eating, and he frequently recommends books to officials. Reading is a habit. It’s a way of life. “Reading keeps the mind alive, gives people wisdom and inspiration, and cultivates a noble spirit.”

Trading used books online

Duo Zhua Yu, or Deja Vu, is an online secondhand bookshop that buys secondhand books at between 20 and 40% of their original price and sells them at between 30 and 55% of their original price.
Duo Zhua Yu was founded in January 2017 and had soon won a large following of people.
During the 2018 Singles Day online shopping spree, Duo Zhua Yu said it would pay more for the books it bought for 24 hours and in doing so its inventory swelled with the addition of 100,000 books, which it says is five times the number of books it usually buys each day.
Wei Ying, 32, founder of Duo Zhua Yu and a former employee of the e-commerce company Alibaba, says the idea of opening an online secondhand bookstore arose from her experience selling old books and CDs when she was a university student in Beijing.
The dream of running a secondhand shop thus took root in Wei’s mind, and in January last year she quit Alibaba, starting her online secondhand bookshop.

Wei Ying

Wei Ying, founder of Duo Zhua Yu and a former employee of the e-commerce company Alibaba

Her business started from groups in the social media app WeChat and she later set up a WeChat official account, with a mini-program to run the business. In March last year Wei had 5,000 books stored in her house in Wangjing, northeastern Beijing. After a year’s growth, the warehouse she rented in a Beijing suburb had more than 20,000 books.
Continuing growth forced her to move twice as she sought more space to store all the secondhand books she received, once to Langfang in Hebei province and again to Tianjin. In July there were over 700,000 books in her 7,000-square-meter warehouse in Tianjin, Wei says.
Though online secondhand book stores provide plenty of convenience and seem to have bright prospects, more conventional, physical bookshops, are still showing their resilience. During the National Day holiday in October, Duo Zhua Yu rented a shop in Beijing for a week, its first offline store, and says it sold 180,000 secondhand books in just six days.

Other online secondhand book stores include Zhuan Zhuan (Exchange) and Manyou Jing (Wandering Whale), which have official accounts or mini-programs on WeChat.

The earliest secondhand bookshop

Whenever somebody is asked about the earliest online secondhand book-selling platform in China, chances are that it will be Kongfuzi Jiushu Wang (Confucius Old Book website). The site was set up in 2002, eight years after the internet arrived in China.
Though the website is well-known for selling secondhand books, its founder, Sun Yutian, prefers to call the site’s wares “old books”.
If you scan the website you will soon see that plenty of books it sells are ancient ones, including the classics of traditional Chinese culture, whose admirers are as almost as rare as the books they love.
“What I did was build a platform to let more book lovers find all the books they want, no matter whether the books are new or ancient, bestsellers or non-bestsellers.”
Ultimately the aim is to provide customers with books they cannot buy elsewhere, he says.
The website is run on the model of customer to customer, or C2C. People run their online shop at a low price, paying 100 yuan ($15) to 600 yuan annually or pay 4 percent of their income with the platform.
More than 70,000 stores sell in excess of 100 million books on Kongfuzi he says, and more than 10 million people have bought books from the platform. By the end of October Kongfuzi had had turnover of nearly 800 million yuan, he says.

The full articles

See here the different sources used:

19 April 2017 “Readers on rise, mostly in digital”
By Mei Jia – China Daily
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2017-04/19/content_28996791.htm

21 April 2017 “Joy of reading is being lost in the digital age”
China Daily
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2017-04/21/content_29030685.htm

25 April 2017 “Reading is a habit and keeps the mind alive”
China Daily
http://wap.chinadaily.com.cn/2017-04/25/content_29068258.htm

8 December 2018 “Tomes that roam in the ether”
By Jiang Yijing – China Daily
http://africa.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201812/08/WS5c0b4e33a310eff30328fde2.html

8 December 2018 – The rarified atmosphere of an online bookshop
By Jiang Yijing | China Daily
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201812/08/WS5c0b6f67a310eff30328fdf8.html

Book The Author

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Reading Between The Wines “BOOK THE AUTHOR” Event

Reading Between The Wines organized the event Book The Author on Saturday 4 May 2019 in Blue Marlin Bar and Restaurant (Hilton Hotel Street). It called all aspiring writers, authors and book lovers to uncover and learn the secrets of successful authors that are in our own “backyard”. Twelve amazing authors from nine countries, representing literary works from genres including: self-help, non-fiction, international relations and humor came together under one roof to tell their stories and discuss topics such as:

–           How to tell a powerful story
–           Tips to get started writing a book
–           Getting past writer’s block
–           Steps to getting your book published

The event was designed to allow authors to showcase their work and inspire the next generation of writers. The featured authors discussed and shared their work as well as answered questions from and mingle with an audience of book lovers and aspiring writers.

About the Organizers

Reading Between the Wines was started on the beautiful Bahamian island of Nassau by five working women who shared a love for both reading and drinking wine. One of those women is Kayla Brown, who is currently a medical student at Peking University and has ambitiously brought her island-style book club to the great city of Beijing.

Since its inception, RBTW-Beijing has hosted eight book club events and has become popular in China’s capital. Having covered books ranging from “Orange is The New Black” to Michelle Obama’s “Becoming”, readers select a book beforehand and at each book club event discuss the book.
Web: https://andinetblc.com/listing/reading-between-the-wines/

About Gilbert and his books

Gilbert is from Ghent, Belgium, where he graduated as master in electronic engineering.
Since 1980 he has been working with China, where he spent over thirty-five years, mostly in Beijing but also in Hong Kong and in Shanghai. He is a businessman, blogger and author.
His second book “LAUGH AND GET WISER! Jokes and witty wisdom for adults”  is a collection of Anglo-Saxon humor and jokes, collected over a period of over twenty years. The best ones of the many circulating around the world. Published in 2018.
His first book “TOXIC CAPITALISM The orgy of consumerism and waste: Are we the last generation on earth?” takes a closer look at data and research on environmental issues worldwide but with a focus on China. It explains the influence of labor markets, governments, financial institutions, income inequality; it details pollution in China, and Chinese overseas investment and long-term contracts, in the energy and resources sectors. A section is dedicated to day-to-day examples of waste and quality issues, and how we can all contribute to make our planet a healthier place. Published in 2012.

The event

In “Book The Author” different authors gave their insights on:
“How to Become a Powerful Storyteller”
“The Writing Process” (Tips to getting started, overcoming writer’s block, etc.)
“Steps to getting Published” (Gilbert and others)

I was good to meet my friend and fellow author Enoch Li (http://bearapy.me/enoch-li/) again and t hear the very different stories of the diverse group of writers. See the first picture for the participating writers.
Also present was the Ambassador of The Bahamas.
Thanks go to the organizer and host Kayla and the assistance of Sabrina.
I also donated one of my books for the quiz.