A passion for periodicals

An exhibition at this year's BIBF featured 4,000 books and 1,000 magazines in four categories, including rare first editions, Wang Ru reports.

When Yury Tavrovskiy was a student at St. Petersburg State University in the 1960s, he learned Chinese language and calligraphy, read poems from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and novels of essayist and translator Lu Xun (1881-1936), and also studied the oracle-bone inscriptions of ancient China.

His knowledge about China helped him in his later career as a Russian Sinologist who wrote and translated works about China. On Aug 20, Tavrovskiy received an award during this year's Special Book Award of China for his work introducing Chinese culture to the world.

Tavrovskiy's photos and other representative works were featured at an exhibition of selected fine publications over the past 70 years to mark the establishment of the People's Republic of China at this year's Beijing International Book Fair, which was held over Aug 21-25.

Organized by the National Press and Publication Administration and the China National Publications Import & Export Group, the exhibition was held to show the development of Chinese publications since the founding of New China.

The Exhibition of Select Publications to celebrate the 70th anniversary was divided into four sections: journals, imported and exported publications, award-winning books and classic books published after 1949.

The journal section featured more than 1,000 magazines, including award-winning titles and famous first issues. The highlight was a copy of China Youth magazine published in 1963 that bears Chairman Mao Zedong's inscription "learning from Lei Feng".

"Many Chinese people are familiar with this saying, which encourages them to learn from role model Lei Feng, but they may not know this saying first appeared in this magazine because China Youth wanted to publish a special issue at that time to commemorate Lei, and Chairman Mao wrote this inscription for it," says Duan Yanwen, chief editor of the China Periodical Yearbook and the curator of the journal section of the exhibition.