纸张书籍真的要成历史了吗?

网络时代的新生代电子图书将大行其道。毋庸置疑，与传统图书相比，电子图书有其无法比拟的优势，其市场占有率将超过90％。难道用纸张、油墨印制的图书真的要进入博物馆了吗？To be or not to be?

While the government is concerned about keeping the Chinese language clean, it should probably also keep an eye on another issue - the changes that are happening to the nation's reading habits. He Fei has the story.

Jiang Shan, who works for a PR company, says that despite her wish to spend some quality time reading good books, her heavy workload keeps her away from reading.

"My job is just too demanding, and I haven't read books in a long time. I am always online, mostly seeking work-related information, and sometimes I read stuff online. But you don't really read online stories the way you read real books."

She's not alone on this.

A recent survey conducted by the Chinese Institute of Publishing Science says that in 2009 more Chinese people read digitalized materials than in the previous year.

Surveying people from 57 cities between ages 18 and 70, the survey shows that slightly less than a quarter of the respondents read digitalized stuff last year.

The growing rate worries Bei Ye, a literary critic.

"Generally speaking, the ways people read are more and more diversified, and that has become an issue. Of course reading for sheer fun and excitement is legitimate, and you can satisfy yourself with those kinds of stories easily by logging onto the internet. But reading is not just a means of entertainment, we should expect more from books, like moral lessons and philosophical thoughts. Now some people are already tired of the superficiality of literature websites, and there is a voice that we should read more meaningfully. I think that voice should be magnified and heard."

Jiang Shan, the PR woman who hasn't read a paperback for some time, says she never really remembers the stories she reads online.

"The internet has such a crazy omnipresence that you get from it the kind of knowledge you can never get from other channels. But I find that I can hardly remember any specific line or sentence that I read online. I think I need to get down to some serious reading. This will give me a solid knowledge foundation and prepare me for developing my career."

Professor Guo Yingjian, who heads the School of Foreign Languages of the Central University of Nationalities, supports the provision of fine books to people, especially the young.

As a veteran educator, he worries that the curriculum of Chinese schools lacks a much-needed focus on extensive reading.

"Schools in the United States demand students to read classic books, and they have teachers in charge of supervising students on that. Also, major newspapers in the States carry influential best-seller lists that are seriously taken by readers as a guide to help them purchase books. In China, we do not have these kinds of practices, and we should have."

The professor is especially concerned about the carefree philosophy of reading only for fun.

To him, that could endanger the Chinese nation's sophistication level which he believes is worth being fortified.

In his school, he has implemented a system asking his students and their teachers to read the same book.

They can frequently exchange opinions about books, and that, according to Professor Guo, at least ensures that his students get to taste the pleasure of the old school style of reading.

Vice Curator of the National Library of China Zhang Zhiqing says one of the biggest challenges facing his colleagues is how to attract people to visit the library.

"Our mission as librarians is to collect books that people enjoy, and make our environment comfortable enough for book lovers."

He discovered long ago that the shelves that store Kung Fu novels are always the most visited, while serious literature books catch dust easily.

In order to promote the reading of these books, the National Library is offering the ultimate convenience to its readers by building a cyber library where people can read its books through the internet.

That means wherever you are, as long as you're a registered user of China's biggest library, you can have access to its tens of millions of books.

Another public campaign underway is organized by Shanda Literature, China's most successful online book publisher.

Shanda CEO Zhou Hongli explains.

"This is how we work. We buy copyrights from publishing houses, we make the books digital, and we put them on our website, so readers can read on their computers, and download them to their smart phones. Note here that many of these books were published in paper first. In a way I think we are promoting the paperbacks."

Zhou Hongli says the campaign starts at primary schools, and the ultimate goal is to allow everybody in China to have at least one e-book.

For CRI, I'm He Fei.