Talk of the town

 

The Beijing International Book Fair draws more than 1,300 overseas publishers, including Penguin Random House and Wiley .[Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Beijing's book fair ended on Sunday, with a bigger turnout than last year. Yang Yang reports.

Attendance of the Beijing International Book Fair, which ended on Sunday, was up 6.2 percent over last year, organizers say.

A total of 2,302 publishers from home and abroad participated. About 1,300 came from 80 countries and regions, including the United Kingdom, France, the United States, South Korea and India.

Compared with 2014, the increase in copyright trade was 8.6 percent－more than 4,700 deals were signed between Chinese and overseas publishers.

Besides the growth in numbers, this year's fair saw publishers try to attract bigger audiences with various cultural activities and products apart from books. Two of the stands that were always crowded belonged to Saudi Arabia and Russia. Readers could meet Russian contemporary writers at the stalls.

Sinologist Yurily Ilyakhin, for instance, talked about his new book, China Spot by Spot, on the eve of the fair's closing.

His book was translated into Chinese as part of the China-Russia Translation Program launched last year.

"China and Russia have been building increasingly strong ties. More Russian people are getting interested in China," Ilyakhin says.