Zhou Yiping, founder of "Yixing Book House", has turned part of her own house in Fuyang District, east China's Hangzhou City, into a non-profit library, enlightening many rural children over the past decade.
Ahead of this year's World Book Day which fell on April 23, Zhou, an employee of a power supply company, returned to her hometown in a rural area. She planned to build a new book house for villagers, helping children there cultivate reading habits from a young age.
"I grew up in a countryside like this. When I was a child, there weren't many extracurricular books available for school. I didn't even finish my Chinese exam in the national college entrance examination, and it's always been a regret of mine. So we want to gather more resources to create more rural books houses together," she said.
The new book house has attracted many villagers even while still under construction. People of all ages, from seniors to schoolchildren, are making friends through books. The sound of residents playing Mahjong, a traditional tile game, has decreased, while the sound of reading has increased. Everyone has discovered a new way of life through books.
Over the past few days, she has been traveling to various villages and communities, encouraging young people to read more and read good books.
"I think although people in the rural areas have gotten better off, the lack of reading has not truly changed. Therefore, I felt it was necessary for me to return and create such a rural book house to improve everyone's cultural knowledge," she said.
After graduating from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2005, Zhou returned to her hometown, working in the equipment sales department of the State Grid Hangzhou Fuyang Power Supply Company. During her lunch breaks, Zhou always enjoys reading, recording her daily reading notes. She believes that reading broadens horizons and expands the mind.
Initially, she established the rural library simply to create a reading environment for her twin sons. What truly inspired her to set up the book house was a trip to visit her classmate in east China's Shandong Province in 2016.
Zhou said both her classmate and her classmate's younger brother had been admitted to university, yet their father had never attended school. During a visit to her classmate's home, she saw books piled on the kang, a traditional heated brick bed. They lived together for a week. When they parted, her classmate's father kindly advised her to encourage her children to read more, saying, "Children who read are less likely to go astray."
Zhou was deeply moved. She resolved not to let her children to repeat her experience of growing up without access to books. At the time, they lived in the countryside, with no nearby places to borrow books. The nearest library was almost an hour's round trip, so she discussed with her family the possibility of setting up a small library at home.
After getting their support, Zhou spent more than 100,000 yuan (about 14,628 U.S. dollars) of her own money to build bookshelves, designing and arranging the space according to her vision of a "book-loving family." In less than two months, before the summer vacation of 2017, the garage and chess room of the old house were transformed into a rural public welfare book house.
The rural library operates on a self-service borrowing system, open to the public free of charge. Besides some self-purchased books, most of the collection come from donations from families, friends, colleagues, and alumni.
However, in the early stages of operation, the biggest problem was the lack of readers. Hundreds of likes were received online, but very few people actually visited. In rural areas at that time, a free public welfare library was still a novelty. Zhou promoted the library in various online chat groups and visited nearby primary schools to introduce it. The number of readers gradually increased, and her entire family joined in the effort, operating the library for nearly 10 years.
"To keep the book house running for a long term, we have to minimize the expenditure. So we try to run the book house as much as we can by ourselves. We do as much as we can afford," said Wu Yingbiao, Zhou's Husband.
Ten years have passed, and this book house has relocated several times, but it has always remained open free of charge. In nearly 10 years, not a single book has been lost.
Zhou's twin sons have now become capable little helpers at the public welfare library. The two brothers recalled that when they were young, they rarely visited the library because of the distance, and their interest in reading was not strong. It was only after the book house was established at home that they were drawn in by the vast collection of books.
"There were so many books. I was really amazed. I liked it very much. I gathered many children of the same age to read together. It was very joyful to read and play at the same time," said Zhou's youngest son, Wu Yanxuan.
"My mother organized a lot of activities. I felt like I suddenly could read many Chinese characters," said Zhou's eldest son, Wu Yanhong.
However, Zhou frankly acknowledged that she herself has been the biggest beneficiary over the past decade or so. Through books, she has enriched her inner world, and her confusion and disappointments in parenting have been soothed by the wisdom found in those pages.
"It's like catching up on the books I missed in my childhood, and it's like raising myself again. The shining souls within books can influence us; every good book can give us different kinds of strength," she said.
Over the past decade, more children have grown and progressed through reading at the library. Some had finished all the history books in the collection by middle school, some had read every version of the Chinese literary classic "The Dream of the Red Chamber" by fifth grade, and others improved their writing skills and even won prizes in writing contests.
"I started coming here in third or fourth grade. I can read about 100 books a year. It's close to home, and I come here often," said Zhao Cheng, a middle school student.
"There are so many types of books here! I can read faster and read more," said Chen Jingxuan, another middle school student and also a winner of Yu Dafu Prize for Fiction.
Now, Zhou's public welfare library has continued to expand, with multiple branches now in operation. Her employer has even set aside dedicated space for a new location. Some of her colleagues have become volunteers, helping to sort and organize the book collection.
"(I hope) to build more rural libraries and turn them into cultural wonderlands where children can nurture their spiritual growth," Zhou said.
Company worker turns her house into reading space to inspire rural children
