CRI听力:The 16 Beijing International Book Fair Kicks Off

Anchor: The 16th Beijing International Book Fair kicked off Thursday and more than 1,800 publishing and distributing organizations from 60 countries are bringing their products to the fair.

Our reporter Li Dong has the details.

Reporter: With English playing a more and important role in children's education, many overseas publishers place a lot of importance original English books. Seth Dellon is the marketing manager of Combined Book Exhibit from the US. Many publishers at the fair hope to promote their books via his booth.

"There are about 60 publishers and 150 books."(www.hXen.com)

Seth Dellon's booth mainly promotes hot selling children's books from the States,from the Su Dongpo, the American version of the story of a great ancient Chinese poet, to Yoga, a book teaches children how to practice Yoga via English. These original English books are expensive. The price of one book may be more than hundred yuan. Chinese readers can buy them with a comparatively low price if these English books are purchased through a Chinese company.

At the same time, many domestic publishers are sparing no effort in promoting their products. Xu Haisheng is the director of the children's books department of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

"We prefer developing our own original children's literature. Because the cultural background of many imported children literature works are very different from the local culture. And we are also considering promoting our products to overseas."

Xu Haisheng introduces the selling of some child literature with strong traditional Chinese flavor like Lao Zi and Zhuangzi at overseas market is pretty good.

Good performance in tackling the global financial crisis makes many countries realize the importance of the Chinese market. The size of the Spanish publishers booth is more than 1,000 square meters. 24 publishers brought more than 1,000 books, trying to promote nearly all exceptional Spanish books.

Jaime Montalvo is the general manager of the Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade. He says they value the Chinese market.

"For Span, China is a very important market. It does not only mean promoting Spanish book, but also, we can find many partners here in China."

For all the publishers both home and overseas, this book fair is a great opportunity to promote their products. And ordinary book lovers can also benefit from the fair, because many publishers say they are going to give discounts on sample books, rather than taking them back home.

The book fair will last 5 days, and is held at the Beijing International Exhibition Center. If you are interested, you can go and take a look.

Li Dong, CRI News.