Society
Reading in Transformation
Balancing the Books
As e-readers gain popularity at the expense of paper books in China, some are worried that reading habits are becoming increasingly casual, a break from somber Confucian ideals. Though purists are up in arms, could digital media be saving Chinese literature from extinction?
Students in a Hangzhou high school use tablet computers as a study aid, September 2011 Photo by Chen Zhongqiu/CFP
“The rise of digital reading is bound to bring subversive changes to the whole industry.”
“The Chinese need to learn to read again,” declared Yu Shicun, a Beijing-based writer and scholar, in response to a survey that revealed only 5 percent of China’s population read on a regular basis. The eighth National Reading Survey, released this April, also showed that the average Chinese person read only 4.25 books in 2010.
Unsurprisingly, the paper publishing industry is under serious threat. In the face of plummeting business, Shanghai Jifeng Books, a chain with a 15 year history, has closed four stores this year alone. In Beijing, the 12,900 square-foot Forest Song Bookstore, with its famous social science and literary theory collections, also went out of business in early July due to stagnant sales and rising rent.
“The decline in sales of paper books has been going on for quite some time,” said Xiao Bao, a manager at Jifeng Books. “The rise of digital reading is bound to bring subversive changes to the whole industry.”
Over the past fifteen years, China has seen a major shift in reading habits. Alongside continued economic development, Chinese people have shown a tendency toward reading for entertainment or light self-improvement, rather than for any grander academic or spiritual purpose. More recently, this national penchant for light reading has been fed by the digital age, with the Internet and electronic devices encouraging a preference for easily-digestible tidbits as opposed to long-form literature ill-suited to the confined spaces of computer screens, cell phones and e-readers.
Citing China’s long literary history, many academics are now decrying the increase in “casual reading” as a poor substitute for traditional or “real” reading, which emphasizes knowledge of the classics and a treatment of literature as the gateway to great learning. Urgent questions are being asked: Is reading under threat in China, and if so, can it be saved?
Face Facts
In April 2009, Professor Wang Yuguang of Peking University’s Information Management Department published a paper entitled Times We Have to Face, in which he described what he believed to be a dangerous trend in Chinese reading habits. Wang was especially worried about the decline of “real” reading in China, evidenced by the results of the fourth National Reading Survey, which showed a continuous drop in the reading of paper books, from 60.4 percent when the survey was first conducted in 1999, to 48.7 percent in 2005.
Casual reading, many critics believe, is an inevitable consequence of today’s fast-paced consumer culture. They consequence of this, they argue, is that new digital media will encourage people to skim read, harm readers’ ability to think, and ultimately encourage an unwillingness to read literature of value, leading to the longterm decline of Chinese culture.
In the not-too-distant past, China saw a flurry of interest in literary culture. Tao Dongfeng, a professor of literature from Capital Normal University in Beijing, remembers well the exciting literary scene of the 1980s. Freshly liberated from the suffocation of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Chinese public once again took a fervent interest in reading. In the newly open political climate of the time, books on politics, history and literary theory were especially welcomed. On his bookcase, Tao still has rows of modern classics from the 1980s.
To Tao’s dismay, however, rapid societal change has meant that modern generations of Chinese people are increasingly ambivalent towards the literature of Tao’s day; his 19-year-old daughter shows little interest in his dusty collections. She, like her schoolfriends, shuns long-winded paper books in favour of light-hearted fantasy or romance novels, downloaded instantly to her computer or cell phone.
In despair over what he perceived as a growing apathy towards reading among the nation’s youth, Tao started a literary debating society at his university, where faculty and students would gather together to discuss the merits and shortcomings of the week’s assigned reading material. However, after only a few weeks, the society disbanded when the majority of its members found themselves unable to finish the required reading in time for the discussion. “The time it took for everyone to catch up became so long that even I lost interest,” said Tao.
Hope for Harmony
While literary purists bemoan the decline in traditional reading habits, digital reading continues to soar in popularity, with a thriving digital publishing industry developing in-step. Some have seen this as the death of “real” reading, others have argued that digital and paper books are not necessarily mutually antagonistic, and their co-existence gives a wider range of choice to suit the varying needs of readers.
A reading survey jointly conducted in July 2011 by NewsChina and Sina, a major Chinese Internet portal, indicated that among 5,089 participants, over 60 percent “read both paper books and digital books,” with the numbers of participants who exclusively read paper books or digital books each sitting at a relatively low 15 percent, suggesting that the rise of digital media may in fact have a positive effect on the numbers of people reading paper books.
Indeed, China’s paper book reading statistics are finally beginning to show signs of life. The fifth National Reading Survey in 2008 reported that after a decade of decline, the number of Chinese people reading paper books had seen a 0.1 percent increase on the previous year, which was followed by a further 0.5 percent rise in 2009. In 2010, it hit the milestone figure of 50.1 percent. Meanwhile, the numbers of people reading newspapers and magazines have seen similar leaps. Most encouragingly, the overall reading rate, including both digital and print publications, clocked in at an impressive 77.1 percent this year.
Digital reading may be the very savior that the Chinese print industry, and perhaps its literary world at large, is in need of. Tao Dongfeng said that it may be wiser to embrace modernization than to push the distinction between “casual” and “real” reading and debate the relative benefits of paper and computer screens. Professor Wang Yuguang agreed: “It’s dangerous if a nation doesn’t read, but it’s like a pyramid; the more people who read, the more will take reading seriously. As long as people are reading, it can only be a good thing.”
December 2011
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