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Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 11:31
New literary landscape
By Mei Jia
Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 11:31 By Mei Jia

The Beijing International Book Fair is opening its doors this week, attracting thousands of industry professionals and fans of literature alike, Mei Jia reports.

Visitors choose books at last year's Beijing International Book Fair. This year's event will be the largest in the fair's history. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)

Lin Liying is embracing her busiest time of the year, working for one of the organizers of the world's second largest publishing events, the Beijing International Book Fair, which is set to open on Wednesday.

To her, the event represents not just a week of copyright trade and international cultural exchanges, it is also the chance to make connections "with publishers, authors and readers", Lin says.

"The book fair goes beyond the publishing industry, and links with professionals from other business sectors."

All the major international publishers are interested in telling better stories about China’s development, its ideals and wisdom in dealing with international affairs

Zhao Haiyun, member of the import and export bureau under the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee

The concept of connectivity will not only apply to the publishing industry, but will also extend to innovative cultural products and tourism, which in turn will find their way to book lovers.

With 5G technology as its main theme, the fair aims to showcase what the next generation of mobile internet connectivity can do for the businesses of reading, writing and publishing. In fact, this will be the first time that a special zone for "5G-plus reading" has been set up at an international book fair.

With high-speed connectivity and negligible time delays, Lin says 5G will be able to offer holographic images of people or content from the books right in front of the readers' eyes.

"In the future, fans will be able to get a sense of how their writers look and talk with the help of 5G no matter where they are," Lin says. "It will change the book launch scene forever, and, in a way, transcend space and time."

This will be the first year that the 17th Beijing International Book Festival and the 9th China Digital Publishing Exposition have been held together with the 26th BIBF as a single entity under the same roof.

Visitors choose books at last year's Beijing International Book Fair. This year's event will be the largest in the fair's history. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)

Held at the China International Exhibition Center and covering a space of 106,800 square meters, the largest-ever Beijing book fair is extending to eight exhibition halls, and will attract 2,600 exhibitors from 95 countries and regions. Over 1,000 book and publishing-related events will also be hosted, presenting 300,000 titles for visitors to feast on.

As well as building on the theme of technology and its convergence with the publishing industry, this year's fair will also celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Chinese culture and tradition will be highlighted, as will international exchanges between publishers, writers and readers from China and the rest of the world.

Lin says 1,600 foreign exhibitors are attending. "This year, we are welcoming 48 new publishers to the fair. In total, half of the exhibitors are from Asia, which clearly proves the BIBF's global influence, especially in Asia. British publishers now account for the largest proportion of overseas stands," she adds.

"All the major international publishers are interested in telling better stories about China's development, its ideals and wisdom in dealing with international affairs," says Zhao Haiyun, a member of the import and export bureau under the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

Children look at a three-dimensional book display at last year's event. (WANG ZHUANGFEI / CHINA DAILY)


A boy experiences VR technology at last year's book fair. This year's main theme is 5G. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

New literary landscape

Zhao recalls the first book fair back in 1986, which was more like a traveling exhibition of imported books. Over the years, it has continued to develop and is playing an increasing important role in building cooperation between Chinese publishers and their global peers.

Zhao cites the example of Liu Cixin's Three Body trilogy, which sold 1.46 million English-language copies. It has been warmly received in Japan, where the first Japanese translation of The Three-Body Problem, the trilogy's first book, has just been released, helping to create a buzz about translated works from China.

"After 13 years of the Chinese publishing industry's push to 'go global', we are making good progress. Our international partners are now actively seeking more stories about China," Zhao says.

One example of this is a range of China-themed academic books published by German publisher Springer, where one of the books has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.

Also, Oxford University Press plans to add its first textbooks to a language-learning series aimed at young English speakers looking to learn Chinese.

Narrating China's Governance: Stories in Xi Jinping's Speeches, a 2017 title published jointly by the People's Publishing House and the People's Daily, which chronicles 109 stories told by President Xi that offer a better understanding of his thoughts and insights on a range of subjects, will be presented in more than five languages at the fair by Springer Nature and Uzbekistan's Akademnashr NMM press.

Last year, 5,678 copyright agreements were inked at the fair, and the ratio of import deals to exports was 1 to 1.74.

Contact the writer at meijia@chinadaily.com.cn


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